The company said it delivered excellent results which have either met or exceeded expectations in all areas.

The TiVAN testwork program was carried out at the world-class Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation hydrometallurgical research facilities in Perth, with the appointed team of CSIRO experts providing significant input and improvements to the process before and during the trial. Selected photos from the testwork are included at the end of this release.

The program has confirmed the ability to achieve commercial vanadium recoveries of > 93% and produce high-purity vanadium pentoxide of > 99% purity, with high-purity iron oxide and titanium dioxide also recovered as valuable by-products.

An important development arising from these improvements is a significant improvement in titanium dioxide recoveries to > 90%, and the ability to obtain a low iron titanium dioxide concentrate of up to 65% purity. This has resulted in TNG and its consultants considering the production of titanium pigment directly from this concentrate using an industry standard chloride process, allowing the Company to benefit from improved revenues. Titanium pigment currently sells for approximately US$3000/tonne.

The testwork was conducted using bulk material from the Mount Peake Project, and was designed to prove the full sequence of hydrometallurgical extraction of vanadium, titanium and iron products from the Mount Peake titano-magnetite orebody, as well as to provide key inputs to the final engineering design and scale-up parameters for the fabrication and construction of the TiVAN refinery.

The testwork program and results have been fully reviewed by Mineral Engineering Technical Services and global engineering group SMS Siemag, with both groups concluding that the program has demonstrated the technical and commercial viability of the TiVANProcess.

The patent-pending and enhanced TiVAN Process yielded significant improvements and value-add considerations in many sections of the refinery process.

The testwork phases were conducted as follows:

  • Crushing, grinding, beneficiation: to produce a magnetite concentrate; achieved with positive results.
  • Feed preparation and pre-processing: this was completed with positive results with further room for optimisation identified;
  • TiVAN Leach phase: this was completed with positive results with further room for optimisation being identified particularly on scale-up;
  • Solvent extraction: Solvent Extraction feed preparation and SX operation was completed using industry standard unit operations including mixer-settlers, operating conditions and circuit configuration. This section worked extremely well on a continuous basis with all recycles taken into consideration.