Defense Metals says it has successfully completed Phase 1 hydrometallurgical pilot plant work at its Wicheeda rare earth project in British Columbia,  Kallanish reports.

The pilot plant “delivered exactly what was required of it,” says John Goode, a consulting metallurgist. “We have confirmed the general workability of the process, optimised certain design parameters and identified areas that will be improved ahead of the Phase 2 pilot plant.”

That Phase 2 work is scheduled to begin in late April.

Final figures are not yet complete, but the plant extracted more than 90% of neodymium and praseodymium from the acid bake calcine, the British Columbia-based company says. It says the Phase 1 work totalled about 110 hours of operations at SGS Lakefield plant in Ontario, where the pilot plant is located. The feed was 600 kg of concentrate from the Wicheeda deposit in British Columbia.

The goal of the pilot plant is to demonstrate at a larger scale and with continuous operation the processing of Wicheeda flotation concentrate to produce rare earths using the acid bake flowsheet to help confirm the quality of the project and to gather data required for the pre-feasibility study, the company says.

Wicheeda has a mineral resource estimate of 5 million tonnes of indicated resources averaging 2.95% TREO and 29.5m t of inferred resources with 1.83% TREO. The project is located about 80 kilometres northeast of Prince George, British Columbia, and covers 4,262 hectares. The mine would operate for 19 years, and it would result in an average annual TREO production of 25,423 t. Constructing the mine and facilities would take about three years.