High Purity Alumina Ambition Rocks PFS of King River Resources’ SSM Project

King River Resources Limited (ASX:KRR), an Australian specialty metals explorer, is currently focused on the Prefeasibility Study (PFS) on its Speewah Specialty Metals (SSM) Project (100% owned) in the East Kimberley of Western Australia.

The Company’s breakthrough in extracting Aluminium from the leach solutions as an intermediate compound has directed the current PFS focus on producing High Purity Alumina (HPA) as the first stage in the project. Moreover, the project planning is well advanced with a process route encapsulating sulphuric acid leaching in heated tanks and refining for the initial HPA production.

The expected release of PFS is in late-March 2020, with focus on designing a modest sized project that minimises capital expenditure while retaining attractive margins.

Before diving deep into the ongoing PFS, let us first get acquainted with the Company’s project.

The Speewah project is Australia’s largest vanadium-in-magnetite deposit. For the project, the Company is undertaking a Vanadium study into the production of high purity Vanadium Pentoxide powders, Titanium Dioxide products, Vanadium Pentoxide flake of standard grade, and iron oxide Hematite.

Project Location - Infrastructure Advantage

Strong Resource Base

The project carries Australia’s largest titanomagnetite hosted Vanadium resource. The resource estimates by CSA Global Pty Ltd include 4,712 million tonnes at 0.3% V₂O₅, 3.3% TiO₂ and 14.7% Fe for the Central, Buckman and Red Hill deposits at a 0.23% V₂O₅ cut-off grade including 1,240 million tonnes at 0.31 V₂O₅, 3.3% TiO₂, 14.6% Fe, 12.5% Al₂O₃ and 4.7% MgO for the Central deposit.

Project Geometry

• Magnetite Gabbaro having flat-lying Geometry, presenting mining opportunity with minimum waste generation
• Very low strip ratio of merely 0.4 of a preliminary pit shell (4.2km*1.2km)

A Glimpse at the HPA Ambition

The Company engaged Como Engineers to explore and evaluate HPA processing options, as well as assist with preparing the PFS.

HPA Beneficiation Test Work

PFS due in March 2020 would include -

• Assumptions based on the project located in Eastern Kimberley, of northern Western Australia;
• Estimation of Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operating Expenditure (OPEX) with breakdowns of the costs of beneficiation, a leach and metal recovery processing facility and the acid contact and regeneration plant required for sulphuric acid production;
• The Sulphuric Acid Plant will be the essential element of the initial process plant.

Project PFS Plan Summary

Open Pit Mining - The Central Deposit flat-lying mineralisation is planned to be mined.

Beneficiation and waste handling - The crushing and grinding of run-off mine followed by the magnetic separation of magnetite and ilmenite would be done. Grinding down further non-magnetic material waste, which accounts for around ~70%, would smoothen the acid leaching process.

Heated sulphuric acid leaching in agitated tanks - Leaching would be carried out on the non-magnetic component using 20% sulphuric acid at 20% pulp density, heated to 70^oC and agitated over three days.

Refining of products - HPA would be produced in the first stage in the SSM project development plan. At a later stage, recovery of vanadium pentoxide (V₂O₅), iron oxide (Fe₂O₃) and titanium dioxide (TiO₂) products by solvent extraction would be done.

What’s Next? A Definitive Feasibility Study

DFS would involve larger-scale pilot studies. Many other commercial variables would be investigated. Flowsheet and technical optimisation would also be the component of DFS.

The study would also include a close review regarding the potential of the offshore processing of beneficiated products with factors such as labour cost, government taxes and incentives, acid costs and electricity pricing to be analysed when evaluating overseas options.

On 25 February 2020 (AEDT 02:30 PM), the KRR stock was trading at $0.037, with a market capitalisation of $48.7 million. The stock has witnessed a price appreciation of 85.71% on a YTD basis.

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