Venus applies for mining lease to progress WA vanadium prospect

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Venus applies for mining lease to progress WA vanadium prospect

Venus Metals Corporation is strengthening its grip on its Youanmi critical metals project in WA’s Mid West region by securing a mining lease over its 134.7 million tonne titanium-vanadium-iron resource.

Venus holds a 90 per cent interest in the world-class resource that has the potential to become an important global supplier of vanadium, a critical metal used in the manufacture of batteries suited to renewable energy storage.

The company’s new mining lease application encloses about 10.35 square kilometres within one of Venus’ exploration licences which covers about 117.7 square kilometres over three separate but adjacent areas. Some of the enclosing licence area is also considered prospective for additional resources.

The ground is readily accessible to major infrastructures such as gas pipelines, roads, and Geraldton port facilities, making it a prime location for potential development.

Applications for WA exploration licences received after 10 February 2006 run for five years, with extensions possible for an initial five years and then for further two years periods, with 40 per cent of the ground to be surrendered at the end of year six.

In contrast, mining lease in WA run for 21 years and may be renewed for further terms, providing the area encloses an identified orebody and related areas for infrastructure requirements. The areas must also be marked out on the ground.

Venus’ upgraded land title is a natural consequence of the project’s advancement and maturity, serving to enclose and protect its mineral assets and mine-related infrastructure and access for an extended *******.

The move would also have been prompted by the company’s improving resource categorisation – now with about 23.5 per cent or 31.55 million tonnes in the measured category which Venus should be able to convert into mineral reserves.

Additional important factors will also come into play in advancing the project, such as favourable metallurgical processing, beneficiation and extraction test results, market demand, commodity pricing, operational longevity and other assessments, which are all key considerations affecting the economics of the operation.

Detailed studies have already been undertaken by the Hydrometallurgy Research Group at WA’s Murdoch University, examining the development of an integrated process flow sheet for the extraction of the elemental vanadium-iron-titanium triad.

Testwork has shown blended composite raw feed material at a grade of 0.66 per cent vanadium pentoxide and 44.38 per cent ferric (iron) oxide can be upgraded through a simple concentrating process to 1.07 per cent vanadium pentoxide and 65.3 per cent iron oxide as hematite.

Notably, the novel and proprietary process achieves very low-acid consumption following a 70 per cent acid recovery that has made it part of a provisional patent application lodged with IP Australia for Venus’ Youanmi oxide ore process.

Venus’ commitment to the project and its Youanmi site revolves around creating an innovative multi-commodity hub for an integrated process to produce zinc-indium, nickel-cobalt, vanadium-titanium-iron and lithium in a single combined processing centre.

Recently, Venus joined the Minerals to Megawatts Cooperative Research Centre bid team as a partner. The team is mainly focused on critical renewable technologies and establishing value-added processing of critical minerals to improve the industry’s ability to capitalise on natural resources.

WA’s cooperative research centre program also includes further development of a proprietary vanadium production process to produce a vanadium electrolyte for clean energy storage, with titanium and iron as byproducts.

This technology has reached an advanced stage, with a provisional patent application for the processing of Youanmi-sourced titanium-vanadium iron oxide ore also lodged with IP Australia.

Venus says the two projects may proceed either sequentially or overlap, which would allow Murdoch University’s new research and education centre to complete the extractive metallurgy for the project.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: *****@*****.tld

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Venus #applies #mining #lease #progress #vanadium #prospect

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up