Metallurgical Characteristics

Recoveries in Bulk Lead Concentrate
Metal	Grade (% or g/tonne)	Recovery (%)
Lead	51	86
Silver	2,620	65
Gold	13	56
Zinc	8	10
Copper	1.4	45

 

Recoveries in Bulk Zinc Concentrate
Metal	Grade (% or g/tonne)	Recovery (%)
Lead	1.6	4
Silver	205	5
Gold	0.9	4
Zinc	58	65
Copper	10.4	11

 

Taranis completed a metallurgical assessment on samples from the Thor Project in 2013. The metallurgical tests were conducted by ALS Metallurgy-Kamloops on two separate portions of the deposit including the main historic sulfide deposit containing silver, lead, zinc, gold and copper and the new gold zone known as 'SIF'. ALS has also completed Acid-Base Assessment labwork of the ore that help characterize the ores and the associated waste products.

The metallurgical flowsheet produces two products - the first is the "Bulk Lead Concentrate" and this contains most of the silver, lead, and gold from the deposit. this is an ideal concentrate for the Teck Smelter in Trail, British Columbia which is located 100 km to the south of Thor. The second product is a "Bulk Zinc Concentrate" and this contains most of the Zinc in the deposit. This is also an ideal product for the Trail Smelter. The two tables to the left show the estimated concentrate products and the initial experimental recoveries. There is considerable upside to improve the recoveries with continued testing in the future.

Finally, there is a significant amount of gold that is found at Thor and these are substantially different from the sulfide mineralization. This gold occurs as native gold within quartz, and is very amenable to gravity separation.

Gold Zone

There is a considerable amount of gold mineralization in an area located immediately west of the known sulphide deposit that has not been outlined in the existing NI 43-10 Resource, and it is contained almost entirely within quartz-bearing zones. A 117.7 kg composite sample was collected from the SIF gold occurrence and served as the bulk metallurgical sample for the Gold Zone. The head grade was identical to that sampled during the Taranis panel sampling program in summer 2013 (15.5 g/tonne). Gravity recovery in the Gold Zone using a Knelson concentrator yielded 75.8% recoveries, and flotation had 96.5% recovery. Cyanide leaching showed recoveries of 92.7% after 6 hours and 97.8% after 24 hours (ore ground to a nominal 67mm K80 for all tests).

Visible gold found in the SIF Zone. The SIF occurrence is very different from the sulfide zones on the project, and gold is found in vuggy, massive quartz. There is no silver or base metals associated with this type of mineralization, and the gold is easily extracted from the host rock.

The sulfide ore contains Galena ("Ga"), Sphalerite ("Sp"), and Pyrite ("Py") as shown in this photomicrograph.

Sulfide Zone

This composite metallurgical sample was very close to the actual grade of the deposit.  Rougher and cleaner tests were performed on the Sulphide Zone and utilized a conventional bulk lead flotation followed by a zinc flotation circuit, (ore ground to a nominal 97mm K80.) A limited number of optimization tests were performed, the best test results were from batch cleaner test 11.