FPX Nickel Corp. recently announced that it’d successfully concluded a pilot test at its Baptiste Nickel Project and produced battery-grade nickel sulfate. The Baptiste Nickel Project is an open-pit mining project that hosts awaruite (Ni3Fe) in an ultramafic/ophiolite complex. The project’s mineral claims cover an area of 408 km2.
It is in British Columbia, within the keyohs, territories, and consultative boundaries of the Takla Nation, Binche Whut’enne, Tl’azt’en Nation, and Yekooche First Nation.
This announcement represents progress in demonstrating the technical maturity of refining awaruite concentrate from the project and finalizes a campaign that was partly funded by Natural Resources Canada. The campaign, hosted under the Critical Minerals Research, Development and Demonstration program by the Canadian government, is committed to making headway on the commercial readiness of processing technologies that support the development of the country’s supply chain of electric vehicle battery materials.
FPX recruited Sherritt Technologies Limited to carry out its Hydromet Program, building on its 2023 hydrometallurgical testwork.
This year’s program was focused on further illustrating the viability of the company’s refinery flowsheet while also validating its ammonia-based purification flowsheet. This year’s program was carried out in 2 phases; Continuous pilot-scale processing of operations in the leaching area and Batch bench-scale processing of operations in the purification and crystallization area.
The first phase saw excellent overall cobalt and nickel leach extractions being achieved, underlining the strength of the leach system. Impurity removal at this level was also achieved, with the report noting that copper, chromium, aluminum, and iron were almost completely removed.
The final solution in the leaching process contained more than 100 g/L nickel, a high by industry standards.
The second phase saw the final leaching solution being processed via nickel solvent extraction, cobalt solvent extraction, and nickel sulfate crystallization. Ammonia was utilized by solvent extraction operations as a neutralizing reagent.
Following completion of the test work, refinery testing results will be published in the Awaruite Refinery Scoping Study, whose results will be available in Q1 of 2025.
FPX Nickel’s Senior VP of Projects and Operations, Andrew Osterloh, revealed that results from their hydrometallurgy refinery tests confirmed the advantages of awaruite nickel mineralization in producing battery-grade nickel sulfate. This, he continued, demonstrated the opportunity to develop a streamlined supply chain for nickel in the country.
Osterloh added that Baptiste could increase current annual production of nickel in Canada by almost 50%, without displacing any nickel smelting or refinery capacity.
With other Canadian companies like Fathom Nickel Inc. (CSE: FNI) (FSE: 6Q5) (OTCQB: FNICF) also making progress in their nickel mine development projects, the North American market looks to be firmly on track to having sufficient supplies of this mineral to address the exploding demand.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Fathom Nickel Inc. (CSE: FNI) (FSE: 6Q5) (OTCQB: FNICF) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/FNICF
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