More strides taken towards BK16 production - Tsodilo

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) - The first consignment of 43 drums of concentrate from the BK16 kimberlite project, in Botswana, have been securely moved to TSX-listed Tsodilo Resources' final recovery area in its security complex in Maun.

This followed the January 18 commissioning of a dense media separation (DMS) plant at BK16, using the mine's historic tailing material to test the plant. Treatment of large diameter drilling samples started then and, to date, 350.6 t have been processed representing 68 samples out of a total of 243, or 28% of samples.

These 68 samples have generated 1 372 kg of concentrate translating to a DMS yield of 0.39%.

Processing of the sample material through a Polus-M sorter will start shortly upon completion of the installation of security cameras and when all security measures are in place.

The Polus-M sorter is designed to treat dry diamond concentrate with grain size -8 + 6 mm, -6 + 3 mm and -3 + 1 mm in the field to carry out geological exploration of diamond deposits.

The Polus-M sorter will treat the -8 mm fraction at the company's facilities while the +8 mm material was currently planned to be hand sorted at the Diamond Technology Park, in Gaborone, although the company was exploring avenues to obtain the use of a larger BV machine to treat this fraction.

The sorter operation concept is based on the use of diamonds' property of luminescence under X-ray impact and on the difference of those properties with diamonds and associate luminescent minerals.

The mode under reference term "luminescence and absorption" when the X-ray tube and photo detectors are located on both sides of the material flow is implemented. The effect of difference in X-ray absorption by diamonds and associate luminescent minerals was used.