Montreal, Quebec, March 14th, 2018 – Sama Resources Inc. (TSXV: SME) (“SME” or the “Company”) today reports that SRG Graphite Inc. (“SRG”) has today announced progress in the development of its mineral processing flowsheet designed in conjunction with DRA Americas and SGS Canada. Additionally, SRG has received positive testwork results on the expandable properties of its graphite flakes from the Lola deposit. Sama holds a control position in SRG of 24,658,267 shares representing 43.93% of the issued and outstanding shares of SRG and is considered an insider for reporting purposes.
The key result highlights are as follows:
Scrubbing Testwork
A first round of test work is ongoing at SGS Canada Lakefield, with focus on the grinding method, flotation and flowsheet development. SGS Canada conducted positive preliminary testwork, using rotary scrubbing for mineral size reduction and graphite liberation. These results support the hypothesis that, for SRG Graphite’s weathered mineralized material, wet scrubbing alone, instead of the conventional primary grinding, is sufficient to produce the particle size required and ensure graphite liberation for flotation. The wet scrubbing method promotes graphite flake size preservation during mineral size reduction.
“The Installation of rotary scrubbing circuit presents a great opportunity for the reduction in capital and operating cost, as rotary scrubbing equipment is typically less expensive and consumes less electric power compared to conventional (SAG, rod or ball mill) grinding circuit employed for the same feed rate and processing duty” said Volodymyr Liskovych, P.Eng. Senior Process Engineer, DRA.
Flowsheet Refinement
In addition to the ongoing testwork for SRG’s preliminary economic assessment, SGS processed a 120kg bulk sample of material from the Lola deposit using its latest flowsheet. The resulting grade concentrate is between 94.8% Cg and 97.9% Cg depending on the size fraction. Purity of 96.6% Cg was obtained for the -100mesh concentrate, and 97.9% Cg was obtained for the +50mesh. Jumbo flakes alone (+50mesh) accounted for 39% of the total concentrate produced.
“The ongoing testwork continues to demonstrate a simple flotation flowsheet applied to SRG Graphite’s ore produces high purity graphite concentrate with a significant amount of large and jumbo flake fractions” says Russell McCarley, Senior Metallurgist at SGS Canada.
Graphite Expandability Testing
In addition to flowsheet development, the SRG has tested its graphite flakes with specialized German graphite laboratory, ProGraphite, for expandability properties. ProGraphite performed expandability testwork on +50mesh and +80mesh graphite concentrate and obtained 350ml/g and 300ml/g respectively using an industry standard method for expandability. Sulphuric acid (H2SO4) acted as acid and donor of the intercalation molecules, while potassium permanganate (KMnO4) acted as oxidizing media to start the intercalation.
“To our knowledge, graphite flakes treated with this method typically require ratios higher than 250ml/g and 200ml/g for the +50mesh and +80mesh respectively, to be suitable for expandable graphite markets. The coarse nature of SRG Graphite’s flakes along with the results obtained during testing, makes this market particularly interesting for the SRG” Christoph Frey, Managing Director at ProGraphite GmbH said.
The technical information in this release has been reviewed and approved by Raphael Beaudoin, P.Eng, Director of Operations, SRG and a ‘qualified person’ as defined by National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.
Original Article: http://samaresources.com/news/sama-resources-reports-on-srg-graphites-latest-metallurgical-and-expandable-graphite-test-results/