Nov 22 2016
Zenyatta Ventures Ltd. ("Zenyatta" or "Company") today announced it has produced a larger market sample designed to provide samples to various global corporations and academic institutions for application testing under a non-disclosure agreement. The program was announced on 26 September 2016 and carried out at SGS Canada Inc. ("SGS") in Lakefield, Ontario under the supervision of Zenyatta's project manager James Jordan, P.Eng. A total of 57 kilograms of high-purity graphite material at a carbon purity of 99.9% was produced using the caustic bake/leach method, which was previously employed to produce high-purity market samples.
This (Part 1) market sample will permit continued graphite and graphene validation testing by potential end-user partners, academic institutions and third party testing facilities under Zenyatta's general market and business development program. This latest sample was prepared from concentrate produced during a flotation pilot plant completed in 2014. Previous test work on small market samples successfully confirmed the Albany graphite to have a very good crystal structure (hexagonal) with a very desirable purity and particle size for various applications such as lithium ion batteries, fuel cells, powder metallurgy and graphene production.
Dr. Bharat Chahar, VP of Market Development for Zenyatta stated, "Production of high-purity graphite market samples is critical and necessary in order to create and develop relationships with end-users during the product qualification and testing process. We will now contact our collaborators who are on a wait-list and prepare for delivery of samples in the coming days."
Part 2 of the SGS metallurgical work announced on 26 September 2016 is underway and will focus on optimization of flow sheet parameters followed by a pilot scale simulation of a commercial process designed for Zenyatta's pre-feasibility study. This optimization and pilot program will be on-going for the next several months and completed in early 2017.
James Jordan, P.Eng., Project Manager for Zenyatta stated, "We are making very good progress on optimizing the process flow sheet and are continuing to develop a distinctive commercial process for our rare volcanic style graphite deposit. Optimizing is a common exercise in mineral development and I have been involved in many over the course of my career. Once ready, the complete process flow sheet and associated engineering data will then be fed into the pre-feasibility study."