Albion Process™ solves the problem of degrading or difficult ores. It combines physical liberation through fine grinding with chemical leaching through an OxiLeach™ reactor.

With 7 installations and projects coming towards construction, it’s proven as a low-capital and high-reliability technology.

Compared To Selling Your Concentrate As It Is

You might have assumed you cannot adequately treat your degrading or difficult ores, particularly as they transition into refractory sulphides or as deleterious elements start to increase.

But Albion Process™ can treat these copper and gold ores and open up new options for the next steps in your process.

The comparatively low capital and operating costs of Albion Process™, plus its very fast ramp up to full performance, mean you can gain a fast payback and be operating in a net positive position within a very short time.

It can also mean that you add significant life-of-mine and long term value to your operation.

Compared To POx

It has much lower capital cost than traditional copper and gold leaching plants like pressure oxidation (POx) plants and because it operates at atmospheric pressure, it completely avoids the many risks associated with POx plants.

It’s also dramatically less expensive to operate, with a recent study suggesting a third lower in ongoing OPEX costs.

Albion Process™ tolerates a more variable feed and lower grade, so it can make some projects feasible and profitable where alternative technologies simply cannot.

It’s also incredibly fast to install and commission and very easy to operate.

This is because Albion Process™ is a combination of ultrafine grinding and oxidative leaching at atmospheric pressure. And this means it is technically very simple and easy to modify or adjust to suit your feed.

The sulphides in the feed concentrate are oxidised and valuable metals liberated, with the economic metals recovered by conventional downstream processing.

5 Key Advantages

1. Accurate modelling means less risk

The Albion Process™ plant is developed in three stages, from lab to full-scale, so it will deliver design throughput and plant recoveries. A pilot plant stage is not needed and a process guarantee is provided. And that decreases the time from your project kick off to completion and it decreases your overall project cost.

2. Significantly less expensive and easier to install

The capital equipment required in the Albion Process™ is considerably less than what’s needed in alternative copper and gold leaching processes.

3. Easy to learn and on-board

As we install your Albion Process™ plant, we begin a thorough technology transfer with our metallurgists and maintenance experts and we train your team at your site before, during and after commissioning.

4. Tolerates a broader feed variation

The Albion Process™ is not affected by variations in feed quality and quantity, provided the oxidation demand is kept within the capacity of the oxygen plant. This is not difficult.

5. Easier to operate and maintain

The Albion Process™ doesn’t have complicated equipment operating at high pressures. The equipment consists of low maintenance slurry pumps, agitators, valves, HyperSparge™, tanks and thickeners.

The individual reactors of Albion Process™ can be bypassed so unexpected failures don’t have to cause downtime. Whereas, a failure within a POx autoclave would require the entire system to be shut down, and it could also result in other processes upstream and downstream being shutting down as well.