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Projects
 
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Nautilus Minerals Inc ("Nautilus") is following the lead by the offshore oil and gas industry to tap vast offshore resources. It is the first company to commercially explore the seafloor for massive sulphide systems, a potential source of high-grade copper, gold, zinc and silver. Nautilus is developing a production system using existing technologies adapted from the offshore oil and gas industry to enable the extraction of these high grade Seafloor Massive Sulphide ("SMS") systems on a commercial scale. Nautilus is focused on the Solwara 1 Project, which is located at 1600 metres water depth in the Bismarck Sea, Papua New Guinea. Nautilus is developing an integrated production plan to develop a "best practice" ecologically sound and sustainable recovery system for the known resource and expected resource upside. The implementation plan is a two-phased project development.
The recovery and ore handling system in phase 1 will comprise the following main elements:
The system design draws extensively upon technology used in the subsea oil and gas sector, and combines this with rock cutting and materials handling technologies used in land-based mining operations. To ensure reliability, dual redundant systems are employed on critical subsystems such as the cutting tools. The Production Support Vessel (PSV) is a key component of the recovery system and will be fitted out with the Subsea Mining Equipment. The ore will be cut and transported via a horizontal pipe as slurry to the riser system. The ore will be lifted to the ship via a subsea pumping and pipe-works system, where it will be dewatered, and the resulting deep sea water returned to the same water depth from where it was extracted. The dewatered ore will then be barged to Rabaul, where it will be temporarily stored, and then transferred to large ocean going bulk carriers for shipping to an existing concentrator facility for tool treatment. Concentrate will be sold to the smelting markets. Building on the success and using cash flow from Phase 1, Nautilus will build and commission a mineral treatment concentration facility to upgrade the ore to concentrate before smelting and onward sake to the market. This project phase will add further value to the development. Click here to see how this works 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 and documented in the press release (May 23, 2008) CURRENT ACTIVITY The Project Development team continues production planning and engineering work on, materials handling, shipping, metallurgical testing and processing equipment. Work also progresses in obtaining the relevant permits for the Project which includes our environmental permit and mining licence. Our Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) compiles all the information gathered during the Environmental Impact Assessment ("EIA") process and was submitted to the PNG government in Q3 2008, along with all the detailed EIA studies. The Mining Lease (ML) application and the development proposal were submitted to the Government of PNG in Q3, 2008 (October3, 2008). To download the EIS and for more information on Safety, Community and the Environment, please visit our CARES pages www.cares.nautilusminerals.com | | |
