How to Quickly Estimate the CapEx and OpEx Needed to Unlock Your Refractory Gold

As ores get more complex and exploratory drilling at existing sites goes deeper, refractory gold is more common and you might be evaluating your options to unlock that value.

Finer grinding, better flotation and more effective leaching are all viable options but can still leave significant gold behind.

When you consider it in a project, grinding and flotation options can be easy to understand and quantify.  But what about leaching?

You Need High Level Figures

To solve this, we’ve introduced an Albion Processᵀᴹ Calculator to help operations and engineering firms get a top-level idea of how much a plant that is capable of unlocking the maximum amount of gold may cost.

And we asked one of our senior metallurgists, Laurie McDonnell, to take us through it…

“Say you’re an operation.  You probably understand what you could gain from adding an Albion Processᵀᴹ plant.  You have a good idea of the value waiting to be unlocked.

“You can use this calculator to start to flesh out the cost side of the equation.  You get high level CapEx and OpEx numbers to put to financial models.  And these can help justify kicking off a project with concept level testwork and engineering.”

The calculator is flexible. It can work with the level of information you have.  Some of the values can be inferred and others might be obtained from metallurgical tests and real input cost values.

Your Big Three – Gold, Sulphur & Throughput

The first two of the big three inputs are the feed gold grade in g/t and the sulphur %.  These metrics are critical as the Albion Processᵀᴹ operates by oxidising sulphides to unlock the gold for your downstream plant to extract.

Oxidising sulphides generates acid and to drive the process this acid needs neutralising, typically with limestone or acid consuming gangue from your flotation tailings, and this plays a big part in determining the operating costs and size of equipment.

The estimated throughput is needed to determine the size of the equipment and therefore estimated operating cost for electricity, limestone, lime and labour.

It’s ok if you don’t have reliable estimates for these.  The calculator has dummy values based on a generic Australian operation.

But the Better the Inputs, the Better the Output

If you know the feed mineralogy, you can enter it in the calculator.  And that can be useful for further discussion of your process.  We can shed some more light on it for you.  But it’s not needed for the basic operation of the calculator.

So what’s the output?  And what does it reveal?

The calculator gives you a high-level, ‘order of magnitude’ estimate.  It gives you at-a-glance estimates of CapEx and OpEx along with a cost breakdown that includes equipment sizing and reagent quantity estimates.

And for a free and online calculator, that can be of immeasurable value when you want to explore options further.

What Happens Next?

The calculator can help you decide on the viability of starting accredited testwork and engineering.  That next level is fast and low cost, but it will significantly improve your CapEx and Opex estimates and also determine how much gold is actually recoverable.

That’s an empowering go/no-go indicator.

In the end, the Albion Processᵀᴹ calculator is the first step in deciding if this technology is right for you.  It opens the door to guidance and a resolution to the hidden value in your refractory gold.

• Try the Calculator, here - Albion Process Calculator (glencoretechnology.com)
• Find out more about Albion Process™ here - Albion Process™ (glencoretechnology.com)