Mayfair Gold commences Fenn-Gib metallurgical tests in Timmins

Mayfair Gold Corp. has announced the commencement of an advanced metallurgical test program on the company’s Fenn-Gib gold project in the Timmins region. The company has retained Ausenco Engineering Canada Inc. (Ausenco) to manage the metallurgical program in preparation for a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA).

The Fenn-Gib project has previously had two metallurgical testwork campaigns, both conducted by SGS Lakefield. The first program, conducted in 2014, focused on determining the most viable processes for extracting gold from the ore, including bond ball mill work index, gravity gold recovery, flotation and cyanide leaching. The 2017 testwork included recovery variability for selected ore zones based on the selected process, grinding with gravity gold recovery followed by cyanide leaching.

Mayfair Gold CEO Patrick Evans commented: “The metallurgical programs completed by SGS provide a solid basis to now explore several viable processing flowsheet options. Once these design parameters are optimized, Mayfair expects the project to support a cost-effective processing flowsheet, and therefore a mill facility, such as conventional SAG-Ball milling with gravity gold scalping and feeding a cyanide leaching-carbon adsorption, as utilized by a number of facilities in Canada.”

In support of the metallurgical program, Mayfair will be drilling a number of HQ and NQ holes to conduct mineralogical and further composite testing. More detailed comminution parameters such as drop weight index and bond ball work index will also be included in the testwork. Gravity recovery will be better quantified by conducting E-GRG tests which simulate gold liberation in a grinding circuit at different sizes.

Past testwork indicates that a gold recovery of up to 95% may be possible with a more complex flowsheet which would include grinding, gravity, flotation and cyanidation. Within the past testwork, similar recoveries of approximately 90% were also achieved in tests above 1 g/t Au with a lower projected capital cost and simplistic flowsheet which included finer grinding (approx. 40 to 60 micron), gravity gold scalping and gravity tails cyanidation at approx. 48 hours. This will be the focus of the upcoming program.

Combined with an expected resource update in the fourth quarter of 2021, the results of the metallurgical campaign will form the basis for a PEA in the first quarter of 2022.

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