THUNDER BAY – MINING – Zenyatta Ventures Ltd. is the quiet one in the Northwestern Ontario mining community. The company has been plugging away at the Albany project graphite deposit for several years now.
Zenyatta stock is trending upward so far in 2015, and is trading today at $1.85 per share.
Like many mining stocks, over the past year the stock has dropped in value. However so far in 2015 ZEN is trending upward.
Zenyatta has announced that it has successfully completed and tested an innovative purification process for production of high purity graphite from the Albany deposit. The work was performed by SGS Canada Inc. (‘SGS’) where significant progress was made over the last few months improving upon an earlier bench- scale process and designing a distinctive flow sheet specifically for the Albany hydrothermal graphite deposit. The data have been submitted to RPA Inc. (‘RPA’) for completion of the Preliminary Economic Assessment (‘PEA’), which is due soon.
Highlights:
- Zenyatta has designed and tested an innovative process for the production of high purity natural graphite;
- SGS analyses of all six purified Albany graphite samples yielded greater than 99.9% purity;
- RPA is in possession of all process flow sheet data and will produce a PEA report in the near term.
Aubrey Eveleigh, President & CEO at Zenyatta commented, “SGS has developed a relatively benign purification process from an environmentally benign deposit to produce highly crystalline graphite exceeding 99.9% purity. Feedback from the market, including potential strategic partners in the CleanTech sector, suggests that environmental considerations are critical when sourcing raw materials for today’s high tech applications like energy storage.”
The SGS test work successfully designed and tested a process that is unique to Zenyatta’s Albany deposit. A fully engineered and simplified process (flow sheet) has been completed providing data for crushing, grinding, flotation, residence time, temperature, energy requirements, water treatment, reagent consumption, equipment sizing, mixing, separation and handling. A technically feasible and distinctive process flow sheet was developed to purify the Albany graphite. The continued metallurgical work under a pre-feasibility and full feasibility study has the potential to result in additional optimization. The complete process flow sheet and associated engineering data have now been submitted to RPA for inclusion into the PEA.
Zenyatta would like to further acknowledge and thank the Federal and Provincial Governments for their important support to this innovative purification process. The National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (‘NOHFC’) initiated by the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (‘MNDM’) provided financial contributions to advance the metallurgical work at SGS.
Zenyatta continues to develop the unique Albany graphite deposit in northern Ontario, Canada. The Project is located 30 km north of the Trans-Canada Highway, with access to the power line and natural gas pipeline near the communities of Constance Lake First Nation and Hearst. A rail line is located 70 km away, with an all-weather road approximately 10 km from the graphite deposit.
The outlook for the global graphite market is very promising with demand growing rapidly from new applications. Graphite is now considered one of the more strategic elements by many leading industrial nations, particularly for its growing importance in high technology manufacturing and in the emerging “green” industries such as components of energy storage devices for electric vehicles, computers, smartphones etc. The applications for graphitic material are constantly evolving due to its unique chemical, electrical and thermal properties. It maintains its stability and strength under temperatures in excess of 3,000°C and is very resistant to chemical corrosion. It is also one of the lightest of all reinforcing elements and has high natural lubricating abilities. Some of these key physical and chemical properties make it critical to modern industry.
The metallurgical test work is being performed under the supervision of Alex Mezei, M.Sc., P.Eng., Director, Engineering Technical Services at SGS Lakefield, independent consultants to Zenyatta, and Peter Wood, P.Eng., P.Geo., VP Exploration of Zenyatta. Peter Wood and Alex Mezei are the Qualified Persons under National Instrument 43-101 who supervised the preparation of the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for the disclosure contained in this news release and they have reviewed this news release. SGS performed analyses of all purified Albany graphite samples by direct ash analysis using a platinum crucible, according to a validated method that also accurately quantifies key trace level impurities by subsequent ICP analysis. This allowed SGS not only to accurately characterize the purified graphite, but also to support the metallurgical balancing for the purpose of the PEA study.
