U308 to Test the Efficiency of U-pgrade™ Process to Further Concentrate Uranium-Vanadium at Laguna Salada Deposit

U308 (TSX:UWE) has announced that it has requested Marenica Energy (ASX:MEY) to undertake test work to determine the efficiency of its U-pgrade™ technology to generate a richer uranium-vanadium concentrate than its preliminary economic assessment on the Languna Salada Deposit from September, 2014.
As quoted in the press release:

This test work constitutes one component of a strategy aimed at reducing the estimated cost of extraction of uranium and vanadium at Laguna Salada.
“Our Laguna Salada Deposit, in which uranium and vanadium is concentrated in the sandy material between pebbles within a few metres of surface in a flat, gravel plain, affords us opportunities of leveraging the deposit’s remarkable simplicity to capture potential production cost savings” said Dr Richard Spencer, President and CEO of U3O8 Corp.  “The efficiency of the U-pgrade^TM process has led to significant reductions in estimated operating and capital costs in a deposit in Namibia that shares some of Laguna Salada’s characteristics. If the Laguna Salada deposit is amenable to this technology, significant capital and operating cost savings could be realized as compared with the PEA estimates, which would substantially improve project’s economics and leverage our exploration potential in the region.”
Beneficiation Characteristics of the Laguna Salada gravel
The model constructed for the PEA on the Laguna Salada Deposit used the results from metallurgical test work that showed that scrubbing and screening of Laguna Salada gravel resulted in 82% of the deposit’s uranium and 33% of its vanadium concentrated in 9% of the gravel’s original mass.  As a means of illustrating the potentially greater efficiency of the U-pgrade^TM process, test work on Deep Yellow Limited’s Tumas deposit in Namibia resulted in 82% of the uranium being concentrated in only 2% of the mass of the ore.  The small mass of the concentrate generated by test work on Tumas ore should reduce capital and operating costs due to the significantly smaller installations required.

Click here to read the full press release.