Richmond Vanadium Technology’s plan to develop a mining operation in north west Queensland has become a lot more sophisticated.

The Perth-based company has a four stage plan to align with current low emissions standards touted by potential customers, governments and corporate partners.

Main image: Aircore drilling at Richmond vanadium project. Pic courtesy RVT

The company is well into its bankable feasibility study which will lead to a development decision by the end of next year said CEO Jon Price.

The first project involves water which is a feast and famine prospect in the monsoon influenced Gulf of Carpentaria, said Mr Price.

“So we’re looking at a lot of new innovative technology that can enable us to use less water and recycle a lot more of the water through dewatering, through thickening and filtration technology that’s new and being adopted around the world,” he said. 

“Project two is a really interesting one around the circular economy and reusing our waste streams for generating additional products.

“With our body geology, we’ve actually got the opportunity to harness the waste and reuse it and create a product. So from the concentrator, the predominant mineral within our waste stream is a benign quick-lime product, which is used in construction, agriculture and for acid neutralization. 

“The back end of the refinery is predominantly gyprock, which again can be used in the construction and building industries. 

“So there’s an opportunity there to again create, to minimize waste, but also to maximize potential for another product to be produced or processed from our vanadium project. So that’s great.”

Replacing diesel

The third project involved carrying out a cost-benefit analysis around reducing diesel and electrifying the mining fleet said Mr Price.  

“And that is coupled with using renewable solar power and wind resources in the region and using our own vanadium batteries,” he said.

“What we’d love to see is the ability to actually power our mining fleet and even some of our processing equipment utilizing renewable energy and then storing that energy into vanadium redox flow batteries. 

“So that is an exciting body of work being done by some of our consultants starting early next year. 

“We’ve also identified a high vanadium, low calcium zone within the Lily Vale area, and that’s obviously going to enhance economics and reduce operating costs, but also allows us to build that lower risk economic model to get up and away a little bit earlier.

The aims of the news projects aligns with the state government which was the vanadium industry’s biggest advocate, the said Mr Price.

“Not only is it the completing the supply chain all the way to end user, but it’s also doing it in a way that maximizes circular economy initiatives and renewable energy initiatives. 

“I think meeting their objectives of creating new industry and diversifying regional economies, but also doing it in an extremely environmentally friendly way and minimizing carbon footprint or reducing carbon emissions along the way.”

Richmond Vanadium would like to see sub-stations set up in Julia Creek and Richmond to channel electricity into and draw from the Copperstring infrastructure said Mr Price.