Process design for the Ivana uranium-vanadium mill

Abstract

ABSTRACT Blue Sky Uranium Corporation’s Amarillo Grande Project in Rio Negro Province, Argentina, features the Ivana near-surface uranium deposit, which has significant vanadium credits. This article begins by reviewing the project location and the specific qualities of the Ivana deposit that led to decisions on the Ivana mining and mineral processing methods. The bulk of the article describes the thought process that resulted in the innovative and unique conceptual milling process for uranium and vanadium recovery. The deposit mineralogy is described in detail. The milling process begins with attrition scrubbing of the mined material to reject coarser barren material and increase mill feed grade by four times. Alkaline carbonate leaching is followed by pressure filtration. The pregnant leach solution is concentrated with concomitant reagent and water recovery using membrane filtration. Activated carbon columns remove the organic impurities from the concentrated leach solution, which then feeds the unique solvent extraction circuit. The solvent extraction process separates uranium and vanadium. Uranium is precipitated as uranium peroxide, which is calcined to U3O8. Vanadium is precipitated as ammonium vanadate, which is calcined to V2O5. The process releases no liquid effluents to the environment.