Aim-listed Empire Metals has completed an integrated metallurgical processing flowsheet for the Pitfield titanium project, in Western Australia, capable of producing a premium 99% titanium dioxide pigment.
The flowsheet followed bench-scale testwork successfully completed across key processing stages.
Pitfield’s use of conventional processing technology, combined with the orebody’s mineralogical advantage and the project’s proximity to readily available infrastructure, underpins a highly competitive cost structure.
Empire explains the flowsheet also offers the optionality to produce titanium metal feedstock and high-grade alumina as a co-product.
High-grade alumina produced from the pre-leach solution offers the potential for a highly marketable co-product that simultanously lifts titanium dioxide recovery, lowers reagent costs and reduces waste.
Empire confirms that Pitfield can be a significant Western source of titanium dioxide pigment and titanium sponge metal feedstock distinct from the energy-intensive ilmenite supply source that currently dominates global production.
The company will soon start with a 12-month metallurgical piloting programme to validate design criteria of the plant ahead of feasibility studies, as well as to produce product samples for evaluation by potential customers and offtake partners.
Notably, Empire has commissioned a research programme at Murdoch University’s Extractive Metallurgy Hub to develop a process for producing titanium metal directly from Pitfield’s titanium dioxide product through molten salt electrolysis, offering a potential low-cost, lower-emission route to titanium metal and a pathway to further downstream value.
Empire MD Shaun Bunn affirms the company is on track to complete the process design and scoping phase of the project following an extensive and productive period of research, testwork and innovation.
“Further engineering and pilot- scale testwork will continue to evaluate scalability, allow process optimisation and further demonstrate the project’s merits. Pitfield is emerging as a differentiated, large-scale critical minerals project, well-positioned to meet the needs of titanium and titanium dioxide end-users at a time when new, low- cost supply solutions are increasingly sought after.”
