Bluejay Mining plc Ord 0.01p, (LON:JAY) the AIM and FSE listed company with projects in Greenland and Finland, is delighted to provide an update on metallurgical process developments and product specifications for its ilmenite products from its flagship Pituffik Project in Greenland (‘Pituffik’).
· Further optimisation of wet gravity and dry magnetic circuits has led to a step change in anticipated process efficiency
o Due to the unique mineralogical characteristics and high heavy mineral grade the metallurgical flow sheet is now both simple and flexible
· Production of two homogeneous and consistent grade ilmenite ores suitable for sulphate pigment as well as for sulphate and chloride slag production can now be demonstrated at large scale:
1. A Standard Ilmenite product with composition that compares favourably with other similar high iron(II) oxide (‘FeO’) ilmenite products:
o typical titanium dioxide (‘TiO2’) content of 46% and FeO content >38% that is readily soluble in low strength sulphuric acid at high process efficiency
o low levels of key impurity chromium(III) oxide (‘Cr2O3’) at 0.06% and Vanadium(V) oxide V2O5 at 0.35%
o radioactive elements below detection limits
2. A Premium Ilmenite product that has all the attributes of the Standard Ilmenite Product plus favourable low alkali (magnesium oxide (‘MgO’) and calcium oxide (‘CaO’)) content that ensures suitability for chloride slag production. Typical key composition shown below:
Run-of-Mine (ROM), Heavy Mineral Concentrates (HMC), Standard Ilmenite and Premium Ilmenite samples and specifications have now been shipped to potential customers. Further samples will be made available for interested customers in Q4 in addition to the bulk samples being collected and shipped from the current programmes underway in Greenland.
Bluejay Mining Plc CEO Roderick McIllree said, “This project continues to surprise me by its continued upside. We have proven Pituffik’s ability to produce a premium, but more importantly homogenous product derived by a very efficient, simple and cost-effective process. I would like to commend our metallurgical team on the identification and design of what is an elegantly simple and very cost-effective flow sheet, which strongly positions us for commercial production.
“We can now definitively design and cost the project with these essential items in place and with the continued advancement of the environmental and social work programmes we can expect an exploitation licence application placed in the next few months. Such a simple process will reduce the required capital expenditure while keeping operating costs low. Furthermore, this process plant is easily expandable due to the modular nature of the process.”
IHC Robbins Test Work
The objectives of the test programme were to develop and improve on a conceptual process methodology and to confirm the ability to efficiently produce an ilmenite product with <1.0% SiO2 and low levels of CaO and MgO at larger scale.
Figure One: Pituffik metallurgical schematic separation process
Figure 2 Wet Concentrator Plant
Figure 3 Mineral separation circuit
All the process components; spirals, up current classifier, and dry magnetic separators use existing off-the-shelf technology and consist of well recognised equipment currently in operation in the mineral sands industry. This process is modular and is expandable as required on short time scales.
Next steps
Process design is now confirmed and will be optimised to suit the mining plan once fully defined. Completion test work will include confirmatory process trials of larger batches of ROM ore to give more Premium Ilmenite and Standard Ilmenite. These will be used for customer acceptance tests. This signals the end of test work and process design and now enables the completion of design engineering that will determine capital expenditure and subsequent operating costs.
