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Projects
 
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Combining skills from onshore mining, dredging and deepwater construction, our engineering team has scoped out the three main components of the mining system, which are the:
The first step in the extraction process involves cutting the seafloor material and drawing it into the suction mouth of the Seafloor Mining Tool (SMT) as slurry. It is then transported to a pumping module and lifted up a steel riser pipe to the Mining Support Vessel (MSV) on the surface where the material is dewatered. After dewatering, the ore is transferred to barges on a continuous cycle for shipment to a nearby port facility. Engineering work for the project is ongoing in 2009 METALLURGY Results from mineralogical and metallurgical investigations of ore concluded that a highly marketable copper concentrate with grades of better than 28% copper can be produced using standard froth flotation techniques with copper recoveries of more than 85%. Additionally the low bond work index, indicates the potential low capital and operating cost for treatment of Solwara 1 ore. Analysis was completed on 10 composite samples recovered from 1.2 tonnes of Solwara 1 drill core collected during the 2007 drilling campaign at the Company's Solwara 1 Project, located in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea ("PNG"), as documented in the Resource Report completed by Golder Associates Pty Ltd.. Testing indicated that over 95% of the copper occurs as the mineral chalcopyrite The chalcopyrite is coarse-grained and can be liberated from the gangue with high recovery to produce a marketable concentrate. Grinding and flotation tests indicate effective liberation with a likely primary grind size of 80% - 55 micron and regrind size of 80% -25 microns. Comminution data tabulated indicates that the ore has an average Bond Ball Mill Work Index of about 11 kWh/t. The copper concentrates contain significant gold contents and in some cases payable levels of silver. Greater than 90% of the gold reports to sulphides either to a copper or a pyrite concentrate. Further work defining gold and silver deportment is in progress. (May 23, 2008) ON-GOING PROJECT DEVELOPMENT WORK In addition to the engineering work, the Project Development team continues its work on mine planning, materials handling, shipping, metallurgical testing and processing studies. | | |
