RE:RE:Taguas SART Plant would reduce costs by $120 USD/oz AuNostradamusII,
The SART Plant at Lindero actually had a capex of $9.68 million to supply and $11.99 million to install, so the total cost of the plant was $21.66 million USD for a 400 cubic meter per hour SART plant.
The Parral SART plant in Mexico cost $2.6 million USD, but that plant is out in the open air and has no building. Another SART plant in Mexico with a 500 cubic meter per hour throughput was constructed in 2008 and refurbished in 2017 for a total cost of $8.23 million.
Given that a SART plant in the Andes Mountains would need an enclosure and provision for heating, $10 to $15 million is probably the minimum cost to build a plant in a remote location.
As far as silver recovery is concerned, a couple of data points are helpful.
First is the Gedabek SART plant in Azerbaijan where that plant had copper production of 151 metric tons, along with 10,893 ounces of silver, compared with 9542 ounces of silver from the flotation circuit, and 3449 ounces of silver in the gold dore in the calendar quarter ending June 2020. My estimate is that SART at Gedabek adds at least 13 percent to overall silver recovery.
Second, in the metallurgical testing at Lindero, silver recoveries from SART averaged 63 percent which is 11 percent better than the predicted silver recovery at Taguas.
With respect to additional exploration at Taguas, I would like to see more drilling of the high grade gold and silver veins at Cerro Campamento and Cerra Silla Sur. Looks like there is potential to add at least 100,000 ounces of high grade gold and perhaps 750,000 ounces of silver which together warrant the addition of a gravity circuit at Taguas for the recovery of free gold.
I would like to see a final plant design along the lines of Gedabek with a gravity plant, SART plant, and heap leach to process gravity tailings and low grade gold ore.
The following is the discussion from Section 9.10.2 of the Taguas PEA:
"9.10.2 Oxide Gold-Silver Exploration at Cerro Campamento and Cerro Silla Sur Oxide gold-silver mineralization potential in the Campamento Vein at Cerro Campamento and the Leonor Vein at Cerro Silla Sur is supported by drilling in the sulfide gold-silver mineralization and projected upwards, above the interpreted base of oxidation surface. Preliminary geological modeling was carried out to understand the oxide gold-silver exploration potential.
The Leonor Vein at Cerro Silla Sur is estimated to contain approximately 0.2 Mt to 0.3 Mt of oxide gold-silver mineralization with an average grade of 5 g/t to 7 g/t Au and 30 g/t to 40 g/t Ag. The estimated exploration potential of the Leonor Vein is based on 24 drill intercepts of over widths of 0.4 m to 6.0 m and an assumed bulk density of 2.5 g/cm3.
The mainly sulfide intercepts were constrained to a three-dimensional geological model, capped, composited to 1.5 m and interpolated using inverse distance weighting to the third power to estimate potential tonnage and grade of gold-silver mineralization above an interpreted base-of-oxidization surface.
The Campamento Vein at Cerro Campamento is estimated to contain 0.2 Mt to 0.3 Mt of oxide gold-silver mineralization with an average grade of 6 g/t to 7 g/t Au and 60 g/t to 70 g/t Ag. The exploration potential of the Cerro Campamento vein is estimated based on drill hole 38 intercepts ranging between 0.1 m and 5.0 m wide and an assumed bulk density of 2.5 Mt.
The grade and tonnage potential of the Campamento Vein was estimated with a similar procedure to the potential for the Leonor vein. The potential tonnage and grade of the oxide gold-silver mineralization in the Leonor and Campamento veins is conceptual in nature. There has not been sufficient exploration to define a Mineral Resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a Mineral Resource. Additional drilling in the oxide zone portion of the veins will be required and the depth of weathering will need to be established with better precision to estimate a Mineral Resource for the oxide mineralization at Cerro Campamento and Cerro Silla Sur."