Aim-listed Blencowe Resources announces that additional metallurgical test work on its Orom-Cross graphite project, in northern Uganda, has been completed by a Chinese graphite technical specialist laboratory, based at Wuhan University.

This test work is said to be critical to understanding the quality of the end-product that Orom-Cross can deliver as a high-grade graphite concentrate, as well as what the process flow will look like to achieve this on a commercial scale.

It also provides significantly greater quantum of end-product for end-user testing, which is critical within the definitive feasibility study (DFS), Blencowe says.

Blencowe appointed Wuhan University in partnership with Jilin New Technology to undertake metallurgical test work on material gathered from its drilling campaigns, which covered both the Northern Syncline and Camp Lode areas within Orom-Cross.

The programme was designed to deliver on five objectives. The first is to confirm a 95% to 97% total graphite content (TGC) pure concentrate is achievable on the larger sample size with low impurities (in particular thorium and vanadium) as previously indicated.

Moreover, it was to confirm that a greater than 90% recovery is achievable for this concentrate; the liberation process to maintain a majority of jumbo, extra-large or large flakes within the concentrate; the process flow diagram for the pilot plant design as part of the DFS; and, lastly, to deliver bulk concentrate to allow Blencowe to initiate discussions with potential offtake partners.

Blencowe highlights that all five objectives have been met or exceeded in this round of test work.

Open cycle flotation test produced recoveries between 92% and 94% (previously 90%) and concentrate grades consistently range between 95% to 98% for all graphite mesh sizes.

The additional metallurgical test work was commissioned to test the required pilot plant configuration and all metallurgical test work undertaken to date shows a robust flowsheet capable of repeatable metallurgy for a wide range of feed samples from Orom-Cross.

The proposed flowsheet was employed in a continuous pilot operation to determine the metallurgical response under typical operating conditions.

The final concentrate graded exceeded the company’s expectations and placed the end-product recovered at the higher end of the spectrum in comparison to its peers.

The pilot plant circuit optimisation undertaken to date has lifted the large flake recovery by 3% and also lifted the fines concentrate grade by some 2% TGC, while maintaining the grade in other flake sizes.

This is important in terms of further downstream processing these fines to deliver a 99.9% spheronised, purified graphite battery-ready product, Blencowe says.

The resultant test work was focused towards achieving the five key objectives as outlined above, as well as being geared towards optimising the flake size fractions and the finer mesh concentrate grade.

These “highly encouraging” results will enable the company to now proceed with further improvements and optimisation to the plant ahead of processing the previously announced 100 t bulk sample, which has already been extracted and exported from Uganda to China.

Blencowe will continue to refine the commercial plant design throughout the DFS to optimise the pilot process and the end product it will deliver.

“We are delighted to see that our graphite product continues to deliver strong metallurgical results which is now endorsed by the leading graphite processing team in China. These results indicate that our concentrate is a highly marketable end product and will translate to more interested strategic and offtake parties being able to buy our product,” says executive chairperson Cameron Pearce.