Mineral Processing and Metallurgical Testing

SRC’s Mineral Processing team provides leading‐edge research, development and demonstration services for a variety of commodities and mineral processing technologies. We help maximize your resource and improve productivity at every stage of the mining cycle, from exploration to closure. 

Our team of engineers and scientists can customize testing and design to meet the unique needs of mining companies in diamonds, uranium, potash, lithium, base metals, precious metals, rare earth elements and industrial minerals.

Service capabilities

  • Testing - Bench, Pilot, Field
  • Evaluation - Mineralogy, Process, Equipment
  • Design
  • Optimization and Troubleshooting
  • Product Manufacture

technologies

  • Indices (crushing, abrasion, ball mill, rod mill) 
  • SAG Design test for semi-autogenous mill design 
  • Attrition scrubbing, desliming, screening and cyclone testing
  • Magnetic separation (dry, wet, high intensity, low intensity) 
  • Electrostatic separation (free-fall and drum)
  • Gravity separation (shaking tables, Knelson concentrator, DMS, heavy liquid separation) 
  • Liberation analysis (floats and sinks) 
  • Ore sorting: Radiometric sorting and XRT

SRC's DMS Bulk Sample Plant is one of the only continuous testing DMS facilities in Canada and is capable of processing a wide variety of commodities. The plant offers the following:

  • One-ton-per-hour facility capable of continuous operation with a top size of 30 mm and a bottom size of 0.6 mm.
  • Density cut points between 2.00 and 3.25 S.G. are achievable with the standard cyclone setup using tracers.
  • All operational parameters can be tested, such as grade, complete water treatment analysis, particle size distribution, percent solids, recoveries and equipment performance required for flow sheet design and optimization.
  • High-security facility
  • Leaching (acid leaching, alkaline leaching, cyanidation – agitated and column, hot leaching, cold leaching) 
  • Crystallization, evaporation, precipitation, simulated solar pond evaporation 
  • Flotation (mechanical flotation, hydroflotation, column flotation, pneumatic flotation) 
  • Solvent extraction, fractional precipitation 
  • Ion exchange
  • Pipe flow modelling for slurries, viscosity measurements for slurries in pipelines and MBI clay analysis (from SRC’s Pipe Flow Technology Centre™
  • Filtration (vacuum filtration and pressure filtration, lab and pilot filter press and centrifuge) 
  • Settling (static settling, flocculant screening, dynamic settling, pilot thickening) 
  • Hydroclassifiers

(from SRC’s Advanced Microanalysis Centre™) 

  • Automated mineralogy 
  • Mineral liberation studies 
  • Acid generating potential 
  • Mineral deportment studies

Our Mineral Processing team also works with SRC Geoanalytical Laboratories (an ISO/IEC accredited facility) and SRC’s Advanced Microanalysis Centre™ to offer clients an expanded range of services for mineralogical analyses. In addition, SRC Environmental Analytical Laboratories provides our clients with environmental testing and is one of only a few laboratories accredited for radioactive substances.