CRITICAL MINERALS - GOLD
PRISM is Developing a World-Scale Portfolio of Critical Minerals
Free-milling Gold
PRISM originally explored the Clear Hills ore as a potential source of gold.
An authoritative study was commissioned by the Alberta Energy & Utilities Board/Alberta Geological Survey in 1999 entitled “Special Report 08 – A Study of Potential Co-Product Trace Elements Within The Clear Hills Iron Deposits, Northwestern Alberta” by Reg Olson et al. The report revealed not only the presence of gold, but many path-finder elements that are closely associated with gold and other precious metals (i.e. antimony, arsenic, barium, bismuth, mercury, selenium, and tungsten).
Recent price rises in gold have lowered the bar in terms of economically viable grades, indeed current practice is that gold can be viable at under 1g/ore ton. We caution that this is heavily dependent on type of deposit and the ease of processing. As PRISM’s gold is a free-milling deposit type (as opposed to paleo-placer of other variable concentration deposits) it means that all of the ore must be processed to extract the gold.
To determine a specific gold grade further assay testing will be required of the drill cores - and even then the variance within the core volume means that accurate estimates cannot be made.
DISCLAIMER NOTICE: PRISM is considering any gold found during the minerals processing as a credit and will not be providing forecasts as to its economic value.
The TCM reductive chlorination process did prove that gold present in the test sample was concentrated into the residue; the chlorination process did not adversely affect the gold present.
In 2009, working with a registered lab, PRISM commissioned a study of gold and silver using a standard 1% NaCN leach solution over 12, 24, and 36 hour leaching period. The results from 5 Rambling Creek cores reveal a range of gold grades from 0.35 g/t in one core, to averages of 0.72 g/t in 2 cores, 1.31 g/t in one core and 2.0 g/t in another. A peak grade of 3.78 g/t has been detected so far. The lab results can be found below:
