Maritime Pine Cove Mill exceeds 98% recovery rateClose to the highest recovery rate by any gold mill,,,,,
ORIGINAL: Maritime Confirms High Gold Recoveries at Hammerdown
2024-07-17 08:35 ET - News Release
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 17, 2024) - Maritime Resources Corp. (TSXV: MAE) (OTC Pink: MRTMF) ("Maritime" or the "Company") is pleased to announce positive results from an ongoing metallurgical test program for the Hammerdown Gold Project ("Hammerdown" or the "Project"). Hammerdown is located near the towns of King's Point and Springdale in the Baie Verte mining district of Newfoundland and Labrador and is one of a select few fully permitted, high grade gold projects with an existing processing facility. The program was designed to confirm and optimize gold recovery data through the Company's Pine Cove mill, a 1,300 tonne per day flotation, regrind, leach and Merrill Crowe gold plant acquired in 2023.
Program Highlights;
- Test work completed on a composite representative sample with an average grade of 4.0 gpt Au
- 98.0% gold recovery through the flotation process
- 98.1% gold recovery through optimized gold leach extractions of the reground concentrate
- 96.1% overall gold recovery prior to the Merrill Crowe process
- Potential upside with the use of oxygen in the leaching circuit
"These results are very positive for the Hammerdown and confirm the high gold recoveries that can be expected through the Pine Cove mineral processing circuit. Pine Cove has been on care and maintenance since Q1 2023 and remains in excellent condition. We are evaluating a restart of the mill to process existing stockpiles and set the stage for Hammerdown's development. With gold prices over US$2,400 and all major permitting completed, Maritime is one of the few near-term cash flow opportunities in the current market," comments Garett Macdonald, President and CEO.
Program Description: The test program was managed by Canenco Consulting Corp. with test work completed at Base Metallurgical Laboratories in Kamloops, BC. The samples were taken from drill core composites constructed for the feasibility study variability testing program. The current program includes comminution studies, flotation tests, leaching optimization, Merrill Crowe testing, thickening and vacuum filtration testing, detoxification test work, and downstream geochemical testing. The program results indicate that the mineralization responds extremely well to flotation and agitated leaching of the concentrate for precious metal extraction.
Comminution: The comminution tests on the Hammerdown material included Bond ball mill index work and fine grinding test work on the flotation concentrate. The results confirm that the mineralisation is amenable to milling using either Ball or Vertical Mills. Bond Work Index tests at a 106 microns ("µm") closing screen size for a target grind size P80 of approximately 75 µm, returned an average result of 18.9 kilowatt hour per tonne ("kWh/t"), indicating the mineralisation to be hard. Fine grinding Levin tests indicated that to regrind the concentrate to a target P80 of ~15 µm will require approximately 35.0 kWh/t.
Flotation: The mineralisation responds well to conventional flotation using Potassium Amyl Xanthate (PAX) and Methyl Isobutyl Carbinol (MIBC) reagents, with over 95% gold recovery to a concentrate in only 4 minutes of laboratory rougher flotation time, and over 98% by the conclusion of the test, with a mass pull of approximately 15%. There is grind-recovery relationship with the mineralisation, whereby decreasing the grind size target from ~106 µm P80 to ~75 µm P80, increases recovery of the gold to the rougher concentrate by 1.2%. Decreasing the grind target further to ~60 µm P80 showed no increase in gold recovery to the concentrate. A primary grind size target of 75 µm P80 was selected. Changing the pH and reagents did not increase the gold recovery to the rougher concentrate.
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