The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - August 16, 2024
Corem is developing a flowsheet that outlines the optimum means of recovering rare earths from the Tardiff deposit at Vital Metals' Nechalacho project in Northwest Territories.
Vital Metals Ltd. Aug. 15 reported that it has hired Corem to complete a preliminary rare earths process flowsheet for the world-class Tardiff deposit on the Nechalacho project in Canada's Northwest Territories.
Lying about 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of Yellowknife, NWT, the Tardiff deposit at Nechalacho hosts 31.1 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 1.15% (358,000 metric tons) total rare earth oxides (TREO); plus 181.6 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.17% (2.13 million metric tons) TREO.
Neodymium and praseodymium, a pair of rare earths that are the primary ingredients in the permanent magnets in EV motors and a wide range of other applications, make up roughly 25% of the overall rare earths outlined at Tardiff.
This resource, however, does not include results from the 74 holes drilled last year.
Highlights from the 2023 drill program at Tardiff include:
• 47.1 meters averaging 2% TREO from a depth of 28 meters.
• 50.4 meters averaging 1.8% TREO from a depth of 15.6 meters.
• 53.5 meters averaging 1.5% TREO from a depth of 6.7 meters
• 81.9 meters averaging 1.6% TREO from a depth of 8.2 meters.
• 37.6 meters averaging 1.8% TREO from a depth of 8.5 meters.
• 85.4 meters averaging 1.6% TREO from a depth of 47 meters.
Vital plans to incorporate the 2023 drill results into an upgraded resource for Tardiff that will serve as the basis for a scoping study that outlines the economic and engineering parameters for establishing a mine at the deposit.
In preparation for this study, Vital has appointed Canada-based mineral processing consultant Corem to establish a preliminary flowsheet for using physical separation and flotation techniques to produce a rare earths concentrate from Tardiff ore.
"Appointing Corem to undertake this work to optimize our flowsheet is another important step towards delivering a scoping study for Tardiff by the end of 2024," said Vital Metals Managing Director Lisa Riley. "Corem has more than 25 years of expertise in mineral processes and processing and is an expert in this field and we are confident this work will help us determine the best way forward for developing processing capabilities at Tardiff.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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