NovaGold gains licence for recovery process

Following an agreement with the Canada Centre for Mineral Energy Technology (CANMET), NovaGold Resources (TSE) will acquire rights to a new base metal recovery process.

The original technology, called the CANMET Ferric Chloric Leach (FCL) process, is designed to recover non-ferrous metals, including copper, zinc, lead and silver, from sulphide base metal ore. NovaGold says the process can increase recoveries by as much as 50% and eliminate all sulphur dioxide emissions associated with smelting.

NovaGold will acquire the licence from CANMET, which has invested more than $10 million in the technology over the past decade. The company is negotiating to build a $45-million plant to demonstrate the FCL process to both Canadian and international markets.

“There is little doubt that FCL will improve base metal recovery,” said Gerald McConnell, president of NovaGold. “But the big dividend is the environmental friendliness of FCL created by the drastic reduction, if not elimination, of the smelting process.

The FCL method is used to produce multi-metal rather than single-metal concentrates in flotation tanks. To avoid smelting, these metal-rich concentrates are then placed in tanks of ferric chloride solution at a temperature slightly below boiling point. At this temperature, the copper, lead, zinc and silver go into solution and can be separated from the iron sulphide.

NovaGold has commissioned U.K.-based Babcock Contractors to complete the engineering and cost study for a demonstration plant to be built in New Brunswick. The mining company has already tested the process on ore from the Murray Brook polymetallic mine near Bathurst, N.B. Results indicate a 98.6% recovery of copper and a 99.2% recovery of silver using the FCL method.