Bateman’s laboratory testwork for MINTEK Pilot Plant announced

TORONTO, Ontario – Minemakers Limited, UCL Resources Limited and Tungeni Investments c.c. (“Tungeni”), the joint venture participants in the company Namibian Marine Phosphate (Pty) Limited (“NMP”), announced on Friday the issue of the Testwork Report dated December 2011 undertaken by Bateman Advanced Technologies Ltd (“Bateman”).

According to a press release, the Testwork Report includes all work carried out in the Bateman laboratory and sets out the design parameters for the pilot plant phase that commenced in late 2011 at MINTEK in Johannesburg, South Africa under Bateman’s supervision.

In its report Bateman concluded as follows: “The results show that mineral was upgraded from 19.9% P2O5 to 27.7% P2O5 by a combination of classification, gravity separation and attrition.

“Further upgrading to greater than 28% P2O5 was achieved by calcination. The citric acid and formic acid solubilities of the phosphate concentrate are very high, compared with global results, indicating that the concentrate is suitable for Direct Application Phosphate Rock (DAPR).

“Acidulation of pulverized and unpulverized concentrate produced very high solubility Single Super Phosphate (SSP).

“Wet Process Phosphoric Acid (WPA) was produced on a bench scale, with an acid recovery of around 70%. The acid was upgraded by evaporation to 43%.This work needs to be repeated by a fertilizer company on a much larger scale.

Further work confirmed that a higher phosphate grade in the feed resulted in correspondingly higher grade in the concentrate.

“Grinding and flotation were not effective for concentration of the P2O5 and the flotation process is not indicated as a possible beneficiation process for this ore. (Confirmed in independent testing by Bateman, ArrMaz Speciality Chemicals and KemWorks).”

The purpose of the Bateman work was to confirm previous results from the preliminary economic assessment testwork, to provide operating parameters for the pilot test at MINTEK and to provide a preliminary examination of the suitability of the concentrate for fertilizer manufacture. The work included assessment of gravity separation as a beneficiation process carried out by SGA Germany with the participation of Bateman process engineers.

– Marketwire.com