First Phosphate Corp. Engages with SGS, World Leading Testing, Inspection and Certification Company
SGS is a recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity with 96,000 employees that operate a network of 2,700 offices and laboratories around the world.
Today, SGS operations across Canada have rapidly evolved into highly technical service provision, conducting precise and accurate analytical testing, such as DNA fingerprinting and metals speciation for numerous business lines.
SGS maintains a strong presence as a top-quality service provider at all major ports and trading hubs across Canada. SGS is known across Canada and the world for excellence in exploration and mining.
Dominique Lascelles and her team at SGS in Quebec City are focused on separation and recovery of titanium, phosphate and iron found within First Phosphate ore. SGS has been selected to build and operate the eventual phosphate concentration pilot plant for First Phosphate.
Core sample as it appears in its natural state where primary titanium oxide, iron oxide and phosphate bearing apatite is concentrated within anorthosite host rock.
After entering the laboratory, the samples are ground to a fine powder and prepared for separation by all natural and solvent-less flotation and magnetic methodologies.
Magnetic separation techniques are used to separate titanium, iron and phosphate (apatite crystals), thereby creating 3 separate recovery streams.
A flotation process is used to liberate the apatite from other non-desired host compounds.
The flotation process is all natural and completely solvent-less for adherence to strict ESG recovery principles.
Once the apatite is fully floated and separated, it is removed from the residue stream.
Advanced analysis is conducted on the apatite stream to make sure that the geo-chemical composition is as pure as possible.
A drying process is used to dehydrate the apatite.
The high purity apatite recovery results in a pure powder at 41% purity level, some of the highest ever produced.
The recovery of the secondary titanium stream continues until fully accomplished.
The recovery of the tertiary iron stream continues until fully accomplished after which the small traces of sulphur are removed from the stream for effective environmental handling.