Elevate’s U-pgrade™ uranium beneficiation process could revolutionise the industry

U-pgrade™ is Elevate Uranium’s 100%-owned breakthrough beneficiation process
The process reduces ore mass by 95% prior to leach
The process is expected to reduce capital and operating costs by 50%

Special Report: Alongside uncovering new discoveries through active exploration programs, Elevate Uranium has distinguished itself via its wholly owned and patented U-pgrade™ beneficiation process, which it – and many market analysts – believe could be a game changer for uranium production and economics.

Currently, the explorer has five drill rigs on the go across its project portfolio in Namibia, a country known for its near-surface uranium ore bodies, which generally means uranium concentrations are less than 20m deep and hosted in sediment.

Surficial ore is ideal for U-pgrade™, a process Elevate Uranium (ASX: EL8) developed in-house using ore from its 61Mlb Marenica project in Namibia’s Erongo region.

“We were focused on trying to add value to our assets in Namibia,” EL8 managing director Murray Hill said in a recent interview with Stockhead’s Sarah Hughan.

“Conventional processing really didn’t cut the mustard because the costs were too high, so we developed this process that concentrates and rejects gangue minerals which don’t contain uranium.”

By rejecting 95% of the mined ore mass before the leaching stage, EL8’s U-pgrade™ process produces a low-mass, high-grade uranium concentrate.

“Leaching is the highest unit cost operation of any uranium processing facility, so lowering the mass to be leached has a huge impact on the cost structure,” Hill said.

“It has shown potential to lower the cost base by 50% for capital and 50% for operations as compared to conventional processes.”

That point of difference alone opens the doors to countless development pathways.

Simple but effective

Calcrete ores contain calcite which consume a lot of acid, thus the ores can’t be leached in acid. The top 3 to 4 metres can contain a substantial amount of sulphate, which consumes alkali, the alternative leach method to acid. Thus the top 3 to 4 metres of the ore can not be economically processed using conventional methods.

EL8 thought if it could develop a process that would reject the acid consumers, that meant it could then leach in acid and bring that top three to four metres back into the ore.

“U-pgrade^TM not only lowers the cost base, but it increases the total ore resource we can process,” Hill said.

“We decided to patent the process and build the company around it – we’ve been acquiring assets over the last five to six years that we could add value through application of U-pgrade™.

“It took about two to three years to develop but when I explain it to people, they just go ‘wow, how simple is that’.”

Hill said the company has tested every calcrete deposit in Namibia with the U-pgrade™ process and has even tested its Angela asset in Australia with it.

“Angela has a high acid consumption, and the two previous owners didn’t know what to do with it, but we’ve come in, conducted a few bench scale tests and managed to reduce the acid consumption by 80%,” Hill said.

“The U-pgrade™ process has made a big difference to the cost of the Angela project and combined with all the other projects in Namibia we’ve worked on, we’re very confident that U-pgrade™ is going to work quite well on Koppies and other projects that we have.”

Metallurgical testwork samples have been collected from Koppies for subsequent testing using the U-pgrade™ process with results to inform the design of an U-pgrade™ pilot plant, planned for 2025. Operation of the pilot plant is expected to prove the U-pgrade^TM process on a continuous basis and at scale.

This article was developed in collaboration with Elevate Uranium, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.