Canadian microcap explorer Rokmaster Resources Corp says “very positive” ore sorting test results on material from the Main Deformation Zone (MDZ) at its proposed Revel Ridge underground gold-silver project in British Columbia support further engineering studies.
Revel Ridge MDZ mineralisation “exhibits excellent potential to be sorted using the XRT sorting sensor”, the company said after the testwork supervised by Canenco Consulting Corp at a Steinert facility in Kentucky, USA.
“Rokmaster continues to improve recoveries and processing potential of all target metals,” Rokmaster CEO John Mirko said.
“Achieving this excellent sorting result of recovering 98-99% of all the target metals to 50% of the screened sorter feed by being able to reject waste rock, sheds light on the ease of identifying the contacts between the mineralisation and waste types in this deposit and the potential to decrease the footprint of both the process plant and downstream tails facilities, while moving towards our ESG targets by being good stewards of energy consumption for processing.”
Rokmaster said its sorting objective was to remove most of the dilution waste rock types that would be present in mine output to significantly upgrade feed material to a process plant. Two representative batches of bulk material from the MDZ, about 529kg and 739kg, were used. “Cascading” tests with the Steinert x-ray transmission (XRT) sensor gave an understanding of sorting behaviour under various sorting thresholds.
“The results indicate that, based on the third separation threshold, over 98% of gold and silver can be concentrated in around approximately 42% of the mass, resulting in over 120% upgrade in the corresponding feed grades,” Rokmaster said.
“At the fourth stage, where 50% of the feed was rejected, over 99% of the gold and silver was recovered to the product with approximately a two-times grade upgrade for all minerals of value.
“The concentrated material from these tests can be used for downstream metallurgical testing to estimate the potential effects on reagent consumption, lead, zinc, gold and silver recoveries, as well as any potential complications with the pre-concentration of impurities in the mineralisation.”