Mega Precious Metals Provides Positive Initial Results from Its Metallurgical Test Program for Gold and Tungsten Process Development
March 24, 2014
Thunder Bay, Ontario
Mega Precious Metals Inc. (MGP:TSX) (“Mega” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that bench scale metallurgical testing has been initiated on representative core samples from the Twin Lakes deposit. A metallurgical process has been identified for the production of gold and the co-production of tungsten and is currently being optimized for a preliminary economic assessment.
The deposit has been classified into two discrete zones for metallurgical testing purposes with definition of “gold zones” and “gold-tungsten zones”. Representative sampling of core has indicated that gold is present as free gold and is also associated with sulfide and non-sulfide mineralization. Tungsten occurs predominately as free scheelite grains in quartz carbonate veins that are within a broad brecciated gold-tungsten zone (see press releases February 20, 2014, January 16, 2014). Composite samples of drill core for the metallurgical test program contained 2.27 g/tonne gold with 0.021% w/w tungsten (as WO3) in the gold zone and 1.32 g/tonne gold with 0.42% w/w tungsten (as WO3) in the gold-tungsten zone.
Highlights of the initial metallurgical results include:
- Bench scale testing indicates that 95% of the gold is recovered by bulk sulfide – gold flotation for the gold zone, to achieve a concentrate containing 40 to 50 g/tonne gold. Work remains ongoing on subsequent oxidative and cyanide leach stages to recover gold from the float concentrate.
- For the gold-tungsten zone, gold is expected to be first floated with the bulk sulfide float, followed by subsequent treatment of the tails to recover tungsten.
- Work remains ongoing on both gravity separation and flotation for recovery of tungsten from the gold-tungsten zone. Initial gravity separation test work has been completed on six discrete tungsten feed size ranges. This showed a peak recovery for tungsten of 87%, based on a concentrate grade of 2.0% WO3 in the particle size range of 20-250 microns through gravity separation. This result is not a proxy for whole ore gravity separation but shows significant gravity recovery potential for tungsten. Tungsten flotation will be utilized to optimize overall tungsten recoveries.
Glen Kuntz, P. Geo, President and CEO of Mega stated that “We are very pleased to have a complete preliminary characterization of the gold zone mineralization and preliminary metallurgical tests to define a technically viable process which will produce a gold dore bar and co-produce tungsten concentrates from both ore zones at the Twin Lakes deposit. Relative to other tungsten ore types, the Twin Lakes deposit has a unique ore composition and metal separation characteristics for competitive processing, relative to processing cost and product purity. We are now in a position to continue with metallurgical process development test programs to define the process design for industrial scale gold and tungsten recoveries and related gold-equivalencies for the upcoming preliminary economic assessment.”
Since October of 2013, Thibault & Associates Inc.(“Thibault”) of Fredericton, New Brunswick have been working under contract with Mega to develop a metallurgical process tailored to the Twin Lakes deposit. In addition to development test programs and design of processing systems for gold metallurgical and hydrometallurgical processing, Thibault has developed process systems for various tungsten ore deposits in Canada, South America, Europe and Vietnam for the production of tungsten (both scheelite and wolframite concentrates), ammonium paratungstate (for tungsten carbide production) and tungsten chemicals.
Read more: http://www.megapmi.com/releases/content/releases/article/mega-precious-metals-provides-positive-initial-results-from-its-metallurgical-test-program-for-gold-and-tungsten-process-development-
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