Saskatchewan Research Council to build mineral processing plant
The Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) has announced plans for the construction of a $2.2 million mineral processing pilot plant in Saskatoon. The new pilot plant, coupled with SRC’s existing mineral processing expertise, laboratory and testing facilities, will allow mining companies in Western Canada and beyond to access a full range of applied research, development, process design, scale-up, and pilot-scale demonstration, plus new and improved processes for recovering valuable metals and minerals.
The new pilot plant will support the development and demonstration of new and improved methods for processing minerals such as potash, gold, base metals, coal, oil sand, oil shale and especially rare earth minerals. It will enable the pilot-scale demonstration of new technologies that will be able to increase mining yields and decrease costs.
The facility will also greatly increase SRC’s ability to develop, test, scale-up and demonstrate extraction and processing methods for rare earth minerals – one of the few centres in Canada with this emphasis.
With the launch of some services taking place shortly, the new pilot plant is expected to be fully operational by spring 2013.
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