JKTech has officially opened a geometallurgical testing facility at Sumner Park in Brisbane. This 5,000 sqm laboratory houses state of the art equipment and will be the main characterisation testing facility for geometallurgical projects as part of the AMIRA P843A, geometallurgical mapping and mine modelling, case studies. The facility will also allow JKTech to carry out commercial testing and provide industry-based training for sponsors of the project. JKTech will continue to offer tests in the traditional fields of comminution and flotation, including the new Comminution Index, and expand to develop new indices in collaboration with researchers in areas such as blasting, leaching and environment.

Dan Alexander, acting CEO of JKTech, summed up the future of the geometallurgical testing facility, “This facility will initially be used by researchers, with the assistance of JKTech, to characterise the ores from a number of case studies planned over the next two years within the project. These case studies will hopefully validate not only the new ore characterisation tests but, more importantly, the whole vision of GeM which is improving the understanding of the variability of processing attributes within an ore body.”

This facility will enable JKTech to perform test programs involving large sample numbers without diverting the core research programs and staff in GeM. This will be aided by laboratory and testing equipment, such as the JK rotary breakage tester (JKRBT), JK drop weight tester (JKDWT), bond rod and bond ball mills, point load testing and core imaging as well as a large sample storage capacity onsite.