Aspiring silica sands miner VRX Silica (ASX: VRX) continued to advance its Arrowsmith and Muchea projects in Western Australia during the three months to December 31, both of which contain a combined total Mineral Resource of 412 million tonnes of silica sand.
VRX Silica Limited (VRX Silica or Company) (ASX: VRX) provides a summary of activities during the quarter ending 31 December 2018.
VRX Silica has two silica sand projects at Arrowsmith and Muchea, 270km and 50km north of Perth, respectively, which contain a combined total Mineral Resource of silica sand of 412 million tonnes.
Bulk Sampling Testwork
VRX Silica has completed bulk sampling at both projects – air core drilling and hand auger at Muchea, and hand auger at Arrowsmith – as announced to ASX on 30 July 2018 “Muchea Acquisition and Capital Raising” and 30 August 2018 “Arrowsmith Silica Sand Project”.
The drill samples were used to generate four bulk composites for metallurgical testwork for Muchea (air core drilling only sampling), Arrowsmith North, Arrowsmith Central and Arrowsmith South (hand auger sampling).
The composite was sent to the CDE Global (CDE) facility in Cookstown, Ireland, a specialist sand metallurgical testing laboratory with the intention of gaining a better understanding of the sand characteristics when subjected to standard processing techniques.
The CDE testwork highlighted the potential for further improvements by utilising specialist processing equipment in the attritioning and magnetic separation steps.
The attrition test uses a high-speed shaft with paddles at a high slurry density of 75% solids to liberate fine particles. The magnetic separation step involved pumping a slurry through a magnetised matrix “Hi Intensity Magnetic Filter”, which separates the feed into three distinct fractions: magnetics, middlings and non-magnetics, dependant on the magnetic susceptibility of the individual sand grains.
The ASX announcement on 20 September contained detailed images of the CDE flowsheet, the composite drill hole locations for both Arrowsmith and Muchea, tables showing grades and bulk testwork results, comparison charts of raw material vs attritioned and washed samples as well as the CDE lab scale attrition cell.
The detail provided was extensive and complete and further detailed information is within the 20 September 2018 ASX announcement. The results of the CDE testwork have confirmed that the Muchea, Arrowsmith North and Arrowsmith Central projects can produce a sought-after product for glassmaking.
This enabled a JORC compliant Mineral Resource to be estimated for these projects and CSA were engaged to conduct an independent Resource Estimate on the Arrowsmith North Mineral and Arrowsmith Central deposits which was completed during the quarter.
Having established the Arrowsmith Silica Sand Project Resource Estimate early in the quarter, VRX Silica continued working towards the Mineral Resource Estimate at the Company’s Muchea Project which was also completed during the December quarter.
