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November 23, 2011 -Toronto- Pele Mountain Resources Inc. (TSX Venture: GEM; OTCQX: GOLDF) (“Pele” or the “Company”) today announced that processing design improvements have resulted in sharply higher recoveries of critical rare earth oxides (“REO”), including neodymium, dysprosium and yttrium oxides, (Pele’s “Big 3 REO”) at its Eco Ridge Mine Rare Earths and Uranium Project (“Eco Ridge” or the “Project”) in Elliot Lake, Ontario.
The design improvements present opportunities to improve upon the robust Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) for Eco Ridge prepared by Roscoe Postle Associates (“RPA”) and will result in a significantly greater emphasis on REO production than was envisioned previously. The Company is rapidly advancing work to realize these opportunities and together with its technical team has reached the following decisions:
• The processing flow chart will be modified to optimize REO recovery and will include acid baking rather than the heap leach and bioleach methods proposed in the PEA. Acid-baking is a well-established process for extracting REO from monazite, the primary REO-bearing mineral at Eco Ridge, and is expected to improve mineral recoveries by up to 10-fold for Light REO such as neodymium oxide and by up to more than double for Heavy REO such as dysprosium and yttrium oxides.
• The modified processing flow chart will also include crushing, grinding, and ore concentration using magnetic separation and floatation prior to acid-baking. (Click here to see a preliminary processing flow diagram) Bench-scale testing has demonstrated that more than 90-percent of total REO can be concentrated into just 20-percent of the initial ore mass.
• The mining width at Eco Ridge may increase modestly beyond the average 2.7 metres used in the PEA, by including material from the Hanging Wall, in addition to the Main Conglomerate Bed (“MCB”).
The additional mineralization recently discovered in the Hanging Wall is expected to add considerable resources and will allow for scalability in production rates in the future.
• An updated PEA, incorporating these modifications, is expected during Q1 2012.
• Given the success in optimizing the processing flow chart and the excellent recoveries established in the bench-scale tests to-date, Pele is preparing to conduct larger scale bench testing and pilot plant operations during the first half of 2012.
Pele Executive Vice-President Roger Payne P. Eng. stated, “Given the developments in the REO market over the past year, particularly for critical REO that are forecast to be in deficit for the next several years, it is logical that Eco Ridge transform from a uranium-focused to an REO-focused project.
“While the leaching and bioleaching processing methods used in the PEA have been considered appropriate for uranium recovery, they achieve relatively poor recovery of rare earths in monazite. By employing well-established ore concentration and acid baking methods, we can produce much greater quantities of REO than presented in the PEA, while increasing uranium production as well. We are excited about the new direction these decisions provide for Eco Ridge.”
