European Green Transition encouraged by strong metallurgical results from Olserum, as drilling nears

European Green Transition (EGT) has released the first metallurgical test work results from its Olserum rare earth elements project in south Sweden. 

Test work confirms that the mineralisation style at Olserum is capable of producing a rare earth-rich concentrate from simple magnetic separation, followed by standard flotation.

Following 20 flotation tests, a flowsheet to produce separate rare earth, apatite and magnetite concentrates has been devised using conventional and well-proven beneficiation techniques. 

A bulk rare earth-apatite concentrate containing the minerals monazite, xenotime and apatite was produced with high recoveries of 84.4-92.6% for light rare earth elements and 80.9-90.7% for heavy rare earth elements. 

The bulk rare earth-apatite concentrate had grades between 10.5% and 12.6% total rare earth elements.

This was increased to 30-40.11% total rare earth oxides after high gradient magnetic separation on the bulk concentrate, with initial recoveries of between 55.3-64% for light rare earth elements and 53.8-72.5% for heavy rare earth elements respectively.

"This metallurgical test work on a 135kg sample of typical mineralisation from the Olserum REE project indicates that the target REE phosphate minerals can be concentrated into a high-grade concentrate with a significant proportion of high-value and critical heavy rare earths,” said  Aiden Lavelle, chief executive of European Green Transition. 

“The grade of the final concentrate exceeded my expectations, and the mineralogy of the final concentrate was dominated by the target minerals with 40.25% being monazite and 24.25% being xenotime, which is very favourable.”

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These metallurgical results indicate that a low volume high-grade concentrate can be produced at Olserum and can potentially be processed at a third party.

In conjunction with EGT's fully permitted low-cost drill programme scheduled for the second half of this year, the results support efforts to monetise Olserum by attracting a partner to fund a larger scale programme.

Test work such as this is crucial to derisk further investment and demonstrate to potential partners that the mineralisation style can be processed using conventional and relatively simple processing techniques.