From Dougnill
Listened to the 6/24/21 PI Financial webinar about Cu explorers-developers-producers.
Excelsior mining was the only "producer" my notes are:
- Produced 185,000 99.999% cu cathode in Q1
- Still wrestling with the CO2 problem
- In their initial engineering test they knew about the CO2 and thought it would just flush out, but it gets trapped in the ore fissures and reduces the Cu solution process.
- Showed the previous acid - water flush cycling as the current solution.
- But they have found that the rate of gallons/minute (g/m) of extraction trends up after each acid - water flush cycle.
- They start off at 10g/m - 30g/m - 75 g/min - 110g/m
- They are learning how to operate the well field under these constraints.
- No mention of any other possible solution, other than water, to the problem.
- Water availability and recycling and evaportation may be an aspect of the process that was not anticipated.
- Still thinking of skipping the Phase II but may have to pull forward some of the investments forward.
- Overall still being able to produce but a a slower rate, or having to have more wells in operation for the projected rate of Cu production.
- M+I resource is about 5 billion pounds of Cu. This process will recover only about 50% of that.
douginil Nice overall summary of today's call. Please note that it was always assumed that only 50% of copper would be recovered. That is built into the original financial estimates.