White Mountain Titanium Corp. has successfully completed Stage 1 of a pilot plant program. Following the extraction of approximately 500tns of mineralized rock representative of the Cerro Blanco Las Carolinas deposit, the company’s engineering team undertook Stage 1 with the assistance of technical consultants Centro de Investigacion Minera y Metalurgica Tecnologia y Servicios, Cytec Chile Ltd and AMEC-Cade. The objective of the program was to produce a high grade titanium concentrate from small quantities of the bulk sample, using a conventional metallurgical flow sheet comprised of gravity pre-concentration followed by flotation. Stage 1 succeeded in producing a high grade rutile concentrate even without high intensity magnetic separation. Process recovery was over 92% and concentrate grade, over 94% TiO2. This result was obtained using normal water, at a neutral pH (acidity). Tests with sea water returned equally good product grades, but the process recoveries were lower. Test work on the use of sea water as the aqueous medium in flotation is on-going.
