Atacama Pacific Gold has announced continuous encouraging metallurgical results from the Cerro Maricunga gold project in northern Chile. The company has attained recovery of gold of up to 89% from the 36 bottle roll analysis. The analytical results show that these gold recoveries are robustly independent on the top grade.
The gold recovered from Composites 4 and 5, grading 0.28 g/t gold and 0.50 g/t gold respectively, differed from 65% to 89%. At comparable crush dimensions, the results were reliable with the recovered gold received from the 20 bottle roll test series completed at the Composite 1 and Composite 2 in 2010 December, at comparable crush dimensions.
The company has performed column percolation leach tests at Composites 1 and 2 and the samples were crushed to 19 mm, which returned 89% and 79% of gold recoveries, respectively.
The Composite 6 has been analyzed and yielded low recoveries, which varied from 55% to 82%, though the sample was gathered from the surface mineralization and may possibly have been impinged by weathering.
The CEO and President of Atacama Pacific, has stated that the current metallurgical program continues to show that the mineralized gold at Cerro Maricunga is ready for the heap leach process.
The mining of gold was rapid with the extractable gold from 60% to 84%, at the crush of 25 mm. As the fineness of the grind increases, the leach kinetics developed with 84% of the recovered extractable gold on the 0.1 mm crushed material.
Advanced Mineral Technology Laboratory (AMTEL) directs the metallurgical testing program of the company. Kappes, Cassidy and Associates of Nevada performed the reported bottle roll analysis.