Since 2021 Cobalt Blue (COB) has invested over A$15 million in the Broken Hill Technology Centre (BHTC). The initial purpose was to test all stages of the flowsheet for the Broken Hill Cobalt Project (BHCP) – from mining to cobalt sulphate, cobalt metal and elemental sulphur. The pilot and demonstration campaigns were successful and provided the data to underpin BHCP feasibility studies. More recently, the centre has been optimising the production flowsheet for the Refinery, focusing on various feedstocks including cobalt hydroxide, cobalt-nickel sulphides, and battery black mass.
As part of our partnership with the ARC Training Centre in Critical Resources for the future (CCRF), COB recently hosted a team from the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) from the University of Queensland.
The Cobalt Blue and University of Queensland Teams
The CCRF is committed to training future geoscientists across the full value chain of critical minerals by bringing together industry, government and academia.
SMI is a multi-disciplinary group of scientists, engineers, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and natural resource specialists dedicated to developing the transformative people, technologies and approaches to address global sustainability challenges through the responsible supply of mineral resources.
The COB / SMI partnership is focused on optimisation and development of the thermal decomposition of pyrite. This unit operation is at the heart of the COB patented flowsheet for the BHCP. COB successfully completed scale-up trials at the BHTC through 2021-2024, processing over 200 t of concentrate using a rotary kiln.
Cobalt Blue’s rotary kiln
Further work is now ongoing to consider lower reaction temperatures to reduce energy consumption, and different kiln designs to improve materials handling and reduce ancillary equipment requirements. A vertical kiln prototype is being tested, to evaluate heat transfer and gas handling.
Vertical kiln prototypes, pyrrhotite product after pyrite conversion, sulphur collection in condenser
The partnership with the UQ team, includes dedicated researchers building fundamental knowledge of the underlying chemical process leading to efficiency gains for COB’s projects.
COB has previously evaluated application of the technology for reprocessing mine tailings (e.g. Hudbay’s Flin Flon project), and new mine opportunities. SMI-UQ’s MIWATCH team, have accessed >80 sites across Australia through the work led by Anita Parbhakar-Fox where they have characterised a range of mine waste to identify new resources of critical metals. Building on this, the team are now examining tailings retreatment opportunities at prospective sites.
Cobalt Blue looks forward to further collaboration with both SMI and CCRF and are always open to ideas and projects that enhance Australia’s capability in the resource sector skills and technology.