PTX Metals (TSXV: PTX) this morning said a locked cycle test on material from its W2 copper-nickel-PGE project recovered 97% of the copper into a concentrate grading 28% copper, the strongest result yet from a metallurgical program that began earlier this year.
The test, run at third-party lab SGS Lakefield in Ontario, also pulled 70% of the palladium and 54% of the gold into that same concentrate, which graded 7.2 grams per tonne palladium and 0.8 g/t gold. Platinum was the outlier, with 2.3% recovery at 0.2 g/t.
Locked cycle tests recycle intermediate products between stages to mimic how a continuous plant would actually behave, making them a more demanding read on performance than standard bench work.
What the company is keen to point out is how little it took to get there. The sample was ground to 80% passing a particle size of 50 microns and run through a single rougher stage followed by three cleaner stages, which is a simple flowsheet. Simpler circuits are cheaper to build and cheaper to run.
RELATED: PTX Metals Hits 92% Copper Recovery in Debut W2 Testwork
“These results represent another important technical validation point for W2,” said Greg Ferron, President and CEO. “Recovering 97% of the copper into a 28% copper concentrate using a relatively simple flowsheet is an encouraging result as we continue to build our understanding of the W2 mineralized system. Alongside our ongoing exploration work, metallurgy is an important part of systematically de-risking the project and building the technical foundation required to evaluate its longer-term potential.”
The numbers improve on initial testwork released in June, which returned 92% copper recovery at the same 28% grade, alongside 53% palladium and 41% gold recovery. Head grades for the composite were 0.78% copper, 0.30 g/t palladium, 0.11 g/t platinum and 0.04 g/t gold.
Nickel sat this round out due to sample mass limits, though PTX maintains it remains a strategic focus. Earlier standalone flotation recovered 77% of nickel at 0.83% in the rougher stage.
Upcoming work will target better precious metal recoveries, test the effect of grind size and head grade variability, and revisit nickel in a separate flotation circuit.
PTX Metals last traded at $0.10 on the TSX Venture.
