Vanadium in 2019, page-78

I am aware of 'other processes' outside the traditional salt roasting process but I understand these are yet to be proven to be commercial for magnetite vanadium ore bearing structures.  I suspect, in due course these alternate or even other (as yet defined) processes will be developed to improve recovery rates given where technology is headed.  A post above by @Process1 has interesting commentary around the newer process - refer Post #: 37203324

But the key remains that for those wanting to enter the market in the next few years like AVL, what processes are currently available that are proven showing economic viability - certainly salt roasting is viable provided have the ore and can recover the vanadium in that ore.  Which AVL will be using.

I guess if TNG make it to production, say in the next two years,  and show their process to be viable I am sure that anyone wanting to enter the market after 2025 will certainly look at that and other processes. New technology is not always hiccup free, so first movers in this space of developing a process outside salt roasting for magnetite vanadium orebodies will reap the rewards if their technology works, but also can suffer huge retrospective 'fixing' costs if the tech does not work at the assumed scope in production (risk/reward equation) - outside vanadium a case in point was the technology Anaconda, now Murrin Murrin, developed for extracting nickel and cobalt from laterite deposits (Ni and Co are generally extracted from sulphides so Anaconda's move in the late 1990s into laterites was interesting at the time) which didn't work at first to scope and required significant reworked capital that almost sent the mine broke to fix the issues (but having now established the technology in laterites Murrin Murrin is reaping some rewards there but that took many many years to iron out such issues.

For AVL recovery rates are actually very  good in the fresh and transitonal layers (plus 85% -90%)  but need to improve in the oxidised sections of the deposit where they are less than 50%.  The idea around the upcoming testwork IMO is to improve the recovery rates in the oxidised layers which I went through in this post a month or so back  - and in the PFS they didn't really change the input assumptions from the previous SS either btw.  That is where the biggest upside in the DFS (and in particular IRR - internal rate of return) can come from IMO - improving the recovery rate from the oxidised layers a key for the DFS.  Refer Post #: Post #: 36854785

Going back to my earlier post, what the AVL slide shows is that i.) if you have a lower grade deposit producing a lower grade concentrate but it has a high mass recovery you will be better off than ii.) a company with a higher grade ore and potentially higher grade concentrate product but having a much lower mass recovery than you.  IMO what AVL was really saying is that mass recovery is  a 'forgotten' key key in any comparisons of deposits.  For AVL as a high grade deposit improving the recovery rate in the oxidised section is a key to further improving IRR, given already the good recovery rates in the transitional and fresh layers.

All IMO IMO