Minerals explorer Surefire Resources NL’s optimism about its massive vanadium resource in WA’s Mid West of WA has been boosted by a detailed petrographic study.
Surefire says the study it commissioned has confirmed the company’s Victory Bore magnetite deposit can provide clean vanadium concentrate with relatively low titanium and deleterious elements.
Surefire’s Victory Bore and Unaly Hill vanadium projects sit next to each other about 560km north-east of Perth.
Petrographic studies routinely analyse rocks using various microscopes and for this study samples were taken from the main and central lodes at Victory Bore as part of the company’s evaluation of the resource.
The two lodes have true widths of up to 59m and 55m respectively and grades of up to 0.48 per cent and 0.42 per cent vanadium pentoxide respectively.
Surefire says scanning electron microscope investigations conducted by the CSIRO in Perth show spot grade vanadium within the magnetite ranging from 1.8 per cent to 3.9 per cent vanadium pentoxide.
Importantly, the company argues because the microscope studies concluded the Victory Bore magnetite hosts relatively clean vanadium, the separation process required should be relatively simpler and cleaner. Surefire has said previously the resource’s excellent metallurgical properties plus the economic benefits from bulk mining and preconcentration beneficiation will put the project at the “low end” of the cost curve.
Among vanadium’s numerous traditional uses are in ceramics as a pigment, the manufacture of sulphuric acid and steel alloys and in the production of smart windows with good insulation properties.
However, the market’s interest has been piqued by its exciting new application in the burgeoning renewable energy sector through vanadium redox flow batteries, or “VRFB” which can be used in conjunction with solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.
Surefire Resources Managing Director, Paul Burton said: “These results continue to build the Victory Bore project into a world-class resource which will be ideally suited for the emerging Vanadium Redox Battery sector.”
Burton, who took the helm of the company only last week, declared he was very pleased to have joined “at this potentially transformational stage of the company and its projects.”
Surefire management says it is currently reviewing proposals for a pre-feasibility study for Victory Bore whilst simultaneously planning further analysis of the magnetite along and across the main and central lodes to establish the intrinsic grade and suitability of the material for VRFB.
Victory Bore’s vanadium resources dwarf those of Unaly Hill and that dominance was bolstered further on the back of a recent RC program that saw 62 holes drilled for more than 5000 metres.
As a result of that campaign, Victory Bore’s mineral resource estimate was increased by 56 per cent to 235 million tonnes at 0.39 per cent vanadium pentoxide. Combined with Unaly Hill, Surefire now has its hands on 321 million tonnes at 0.40 per cent vanadium pentoxide, including 16.8 million tonnes measured and 70.3 million tonnes indicated.
It all adds up to making Surefire Resources the owner of one of Australia’s largest undeveloped deposits of vanadium. The quantity is immense and further good news about the quality of that vanadium and its suitability to help power the green energy revolution may well help to turn a few more heads.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
