Albion Process

Albion Process Technology

The Albion Process was developed by MIM Holdings (now Xstrata Plc) to treat concentrates produced from refractory base and precious metals ores. The process was developed in 1993 and has since been patented in 45 countries worldwide.

The Albion Process consists of a hot oxidative leach of finely ground concentrates at atmospheric pressure. The process does not employ autoclaves, and does not rely on bacterial cultures.

The Albion Process is jointly owned by Xstrata and Highlands Pacific/OMRD (a Japanese consortium).

Core Resources is the exclusive global agent for the Albion Process technology.

The Albion Process offers the mining industry an effective and simple solution for the treatment of refractory sulphide ores, to maximise metal recovery and minimise costs.

History

The development of the Albion Process has parallelled the development of revolutionary new fine grinding mills (IsaMill) in the base metals and gold industries. The emergence of efficient low cost fine grinding machines has enabled leaching to be carried out under far less demanding conditions than previously required in pressure or bacterial leach plants.

MIM Holdings began developing the Albion Process technology in 1993, while looking at a treatment process for the high arsenic copper/gold resources at Nena/Freida River in Papua New Guinea.

Various small scale continuous pilot plant campaigns on this ore were conducted in 1994 and 1995 for Highlands Gold (which was later floated from MIM Holdings and is now Highlands Pacific).

A larger pilot plant (120kg zinc cathode/day) was constructed in 1997 to conduct testwork as part of a feasibility study on the zinc/gold resources of Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic.

Extensive piloting was also conducted on lower grade chalcopyrite concentrates for Cyprus Amax in 1998, and for Mount Isa Mines in 2000.

Pre-feasibility and feasibility pilot testing was conducted on the zinc/lead bulk concentrates from McArthur River and Mount Isa in Australia between 2001 and 2005.

During this time the Albion Process has been successfully tested on over 70 different ores and concentrates.

Xstrata continues to actively develop the technology for its copper and zinc projects.

In parallel with these developments the IsaMill technology (which is the enabling technology for the Albion Process) has been further developed into an extremely robust, proven and now large scale ultrafine grinding technology, with 18 mills now in operation around the world. IsaMill technology now represents the largest installed capacity of any ultrafine grinding technology in the world.

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