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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (35541)	3/11/2007 4:29:13 PM
From: siempre33	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78416

Nickels...They haven't lost their value. See the US Mint site at About the Mint and check Coinflation.com The mint sells them for five cents each but they cost almost eight cents for the metal, plus costs of production. A rare bargain from the government. The rise in the price of copper affected the value of pre-1983 cents and all nickels which resulted in this: United States Mint Moves to Limit Exportation & Melting of Coins usmint.gov coin specs....very interesting... usmint.gov

To: koan who wrote (35541)	3/11/2007 5:24:29 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78416

Ok. Ni is the price it is. It will float by froth oil-flotation. It is not easily separable from copper however. amazon.com What they do frequently is produce a bulk nickel copper combined concentrate, and then smelt it to ni-cu matte directly. This is later separated by other processes, Orford or Frasch or Hydrometallurgical/ammoniacal* (Sherrit process). It can be taken directly from a bulk con to an acid leach separation. nr.gov.nl.ca mines.utah.edu Laterites springerlink.com Nickel Smelting hatch.ca A nickel-copper process Mustang Minerals "Mineral Processing and Metallurgical Testing The potential of the M2 Zone resource is enhanced by the positive preliminary metallurgical testing completed to date. Preliminary flotation testing announced February 16, 2006 was completed by FR Wright & Associates Consulting on a composite sample from the Mayville Deposit. The most promising procedure consisted of differential flotation by first producing a copper concentrate, followed by production of a nickel-copper concentrate, and finally scavenging of the nickel primarily associated with pyrrhotite.* The open cycle recoveries to the rougher and scavenger concentrates were approximately 90-92% for nickel and 95% to 97% for copper. The work also showed that a high grade copper concentrate containing 30%-33% copper could be achieved in open cycle tests. Locked cycle flotation tests will be performed to determine overall circuit recoveries and grades. " Beause of the higher capex/thruput cost associated with nickel copper concentrate cleaning whether bulk or separated ni from cu, the ni-cu orebodies have rarely been tackled by smaller enterprise. One exception was in Canada where Sheridan took on ni-cu mines at Maniwaki, Texmont, Kidd, and North American Palladium. North American was Pd-Pt but the principle is the same. Back end processes after flotation make the economics in part also because of the low grade of a nickel con. 10%. Max ni con unless your ore feed is millerite, is 10% or $4,000. (Max copper is 27% if you have CPY, which now is $1666. Bornite max copper con is 63%. en.wikipedia.org. With chalcocite, it could be 80% copper in a con. Worth more than nickel @ $4,936/tonne and easier to process. If you have millerite which is 70% pure ni from NiS, then the game is much different. It's rare, but not unheard of. So higher costs of ni-cu and lower grade cons, mean it is less attractive than copper oxide, copper gold or copper zinc. It is cheaper at the back end to smelt copper, there are many more smelters and there are more processes a smaller guy can do. SW-EW for oxide, no off-gas roasting, blister copper etc.. Easy on the pocket book, up front build and process. I can build a lavados copper plant in Chile for oxide copper for 4 million. Less than one million tons of 2 % copper is an orebody. I have onelike that but the deal is tough. You had to go to Inco or Falconbridge, Mitsubishi, etc.. to get a ni-cu deal or your con treated. Exception now to that old rule is the Chinese will fund you to get cons. Xstrata, formerly Falco, is now feed hungry. Nevertheless LBE was funded by the Chinese. EC<:-\|