May 13, 2020 – Commerce Resources Corp. (TSXv: CCE, FSE: D7H) (the “Company” or “Commerce”) is pleased to provide an update with respect to its ongoing collaboration with CanmetMINING, focused on beneficiation test work for the Ashram Rare Earth and Fluorspar Deposit. Despite disruptions caused by COVID-19 to the test programs, some significant advancements have been made on the flotation circuit.
In recent flotation test work, CanmetMINING – a division of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) – has completed collector screening, an evaluation of mixed collectors, reverse conditioning tests, cleaning stage tests, and a continuous process simulation with a locked cycle test. Further to the initial findings presented in the news release dated March 9th, 2020, CanmetMINING has identified through its test work an alternative reagent scheme and flotation circuit to achieve, and potentially exceed, the target objective of <25% mass pull at >80% recovery. This has also been achieved using one-half to one-quarter of the quantity (kg/t) of reagents utilized in prior test work completed by other metallurgical labs. Previous work has identified reagents as a key area of optimization in the Ashram Deposit’s flotation circuit and where significant cost advantages may be found by screening the performance of each pertinent reagent with respect to their consumption and purchase cost.
Through CanmetMINING’s test work, improvement in flotation performance has been achieved through a combination of distributed reagent additions, reagent synergism, and reverse conditioning in a very simple and basic flotation circuit. Details of the recent flotation test work will be detailed by CanmetMINING in a paper titled “Mineral Processing Flowsheet Approaches for the Ashram Rare Earth and Fluorspar Deposit” at the 2020 Conference of Metallurgists (COM2020) to be held August 24th to 27th in Toronto, ON.
In addition, the Company is pleased to announce that Corem will be partnering with CanmetMINING for certain program components, beginning with multi-gravity testing. Corem is the largest center of expertise and innovation in Canada dedicated to mineral processing. The center provides specialized services and research expertise to exploration and mining companies around the world. In February 2020, approximately 0.4 tonnes of unprocessed Ashram Deposit material was received by Corem; however, shortly thereafter work was paused due operating restrictions related to COVID-19. The work is anticipated to move forward as these restrictions are eased.
The primary objective of CanmetMINING’s work on the Ashram Deposit is to identify a key approach to further enhance beneficiation performance by exploring and testing a range of potentially applicable process methods at varying test conditions. These methods are expected to include flotation, gravity separation, magnetic separation, and ore sorting, in addition to several other physical separation approaches.
The funding for the test work is provided by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) through CanmetMINING’s 6-year rare earth element (“REE”) and chromite program, (announced in January 2015), focused on developing new extraction technologies, addressing Canadian regulations, and improving the knowledge of Canadian deposits (www.reechromite.ca). The Company’s contribution to the collaboration is a supply of REE mineralized material from the Ashram Deposit, in which several tonnes remain readily available from a bulk sample completed in 2012.
The Ashram Deposit outcrops at surface, allowing for cost-effective collection of material for test work. As such, the Company is actively engaging with various research and academic institutions to support the advancement of the REE industry in Canada, and in Quebec specifically.