FYI Resources concludes successful high-purity alumina pilot plant trial

2019-10-09

Oct. 9, 2019 - Australian resource firm FYI Resources Ltd. announced earlier this week the successful trial production of high-purity alumina (HPA) at its pilot plant in Welshpool, Western Australia.

Per the firm, the plant operated continuously from October 2nd through the 9th, meeting or exceeding the firm’s modeled operational performances. FYI says the successful pilot project demonstrates the potential for commercial production of HPA using the methods tested at the pilot plant.

“We are really happy with the outcomes of our trial production run from our purpose-built HPA pilot plant,” said FYI managing director Roland Hill in a statement.

"We continue to systematically progress the development of our HPA strategy towards the goal of commercial production of this ultra-pure, in demand product. To do that we needed not only to demonstrate our ability to produce an outstanding product, but also prove long‐term ability, consistency and capacity to supply HPA to the many interested offtake partners.”

FYI says this week’s test is also proof of concept for the company’s unique flowsheet, and that the test utilized the best scale-up practices that accurately replicate scale-up performance.

“The pilot plant results go a long way in validating this objective with the purpose of supplying, what market forecasters such as CRU point to, as an eight-fold increase in demand,” Hill continued. “Through completing the pilot plant trial, we have identified we can further optimise our process, which we expect to have benefit capital and operating cost in the DFS.”

"With the trial production now successfully completed, we will progress to our next phase of project development being detailed customer engagement. Following receipt of final quality assessment, we will forward our manufactured product to groups that we have been speaking to regarding commercial sale arrangements.”

With testing completed, FYI now has a complete metallurgical assessment of the product in hand, allowing the firm to better understand the product’s behavior and characteristics. The test also provided FYI with information allowing it to form an energy balance, which, in turn, permitted the firm to determine heating and cooling requirements. Information regarding other inputs was also gathered in the course of the test run.

FYI says the information recorded during the test run will make up a core of information for determining the plant’s design and engineering requirements for inclusion in the site’s definitive feasibility study (DFS).