King River advances high purity alumina studies

ASX-listed King River Resources has advanced a chain of core pre-feasibility study activities for its Kwinana project in WA as it seeks to carve a niche in the increasingly lucrative global high purity alumina and downstream markets. The company is working to bring to life its immense Speewah Dome vanadium-in-magnetite project in the state’s Kimberley region as a HPA feed source.

Speewah covers more than 650 sq. km of tenure and hosts a whopping 4.7 billion tonne resource going at 0.3 percent vanadium pentoxide, 3.3 per cent titanium dioxide and 14.7 per cent iron. However, it is the alumina grading 12.5 per cent in the central part of the deposit taking centre-stage in the ongoing pre-feasibility study.

King River recently shifted its focus from producing high purity alumina, or “HPA” products from a mining and processing operation based at Speewah, towards a more direct industrial aluminium feedstock project based at Kwinana.

The Kwinana industrial strip just south of Perth hosts specialist centres for chemical and resource-based processing, marine engineering and shipbuilding. It has land specifically set aside for heavy industry and hosts a port, energy sources and skilled workers.

King River is currently talking with various private land owners and government agencies as it looks for an optimum location for its proposed operation.

Management says pre-feasibility engineering studies being finalised by Como Engineers will canvass capital and operating cost estimates.

PFS financial modelling is also near completion.

In conjunction with consultant, Source Certain International, King River is building a mini-pilot plant to demonstrate the company’s ARC high purity alumina refining process for definitive feasibility study inputs and to produce test samples for marketing.

King River has called its high purity alumina refining process the ARC HPA process route, to reflect the aluminium chemical feed stock, the use of only recrystallisation steps in purification, and then final calcination.

A 1500C rotary tube furnace for the mini-pilot plant, used in calcination, has been delivered and is currently being installed.

Metallurgical testwork to optimise the ARC HPA process for a DFS continues to progress as King River seeks to simplify the final calcination stage of the process. It is also using the testwork to extract high purity vanadium and titanium for possible future sale as intermediate products.

Meanwhile, crystal structure X-Ray diffraction analysis of a high-purity alumina batch has reportedly confirmed the Speewah alumina to be the Alpha crystal form.

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