Australians Switch On Egypt's Tantalum And Niobium Deposit

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). The Australian company Gippsland Limited (ASX:GIP) (Perth, Australia) has embarked on a full bankable feasibility study for its Abu Dabbab tantalite project in Egypt. The project is estimated to cost $30 million to implement, but will produce a net revenue for Gippsland of $239 million over 15 years.

Over the past two decades, new applications for tantalum have been discovered on a regular basis. Gippsland believes that tantalum is a metal of the future with research for new applications ongoing. Since the mid 1990's, significant metallurgical advances have been achieved, especially in respect to enhancements in gravity separation techniques. These advances have opened Abu Dabbab-style ores to successful processing in mining operations in Australia and internationally.

The Abu Dabbab deposit is located within an 18 square mile license area about 770 kilometers south of Cairo on the western shore of the Red Sea, about 25 kilometers from the national highway and 75 kilometers south of the port of Quesir. A new international airport has recently been constructed a few kilometers away to cater to the Red Sea tourist industry. The deposit is exploitable as a low-cost open-pit bulk mining operation and has the potential to make Gippsland the world's second largest producer of tantalum pentoxide.

A recent scoping study was based on a mining rate of 1 million tons/annum over 15 years. The mine's life is expected to extend over a much longer period. This would give an annual production of 196,000 kilograms of tantalum pentoxide, 91,000 kilograms of niobium pentoxide, 524 tons of tin, and 480,000 tons of ceramic grade felspar. According to the study, mining and process costs would be in the region of $14.50/ton. There is the possibility of expanding future ore production rates to 2 million tons/annum.

Applications of tantalum and niobium are based on their ability to form a non-conductive layer of oxide on the surface of a metal, a dense, stable, and adhesive layer of pentoxide. 50% of current tantalum usage is as a powder for the production of capacitors and as metal wire for their connection to circuits. Other uses are as a fabricated metal for the construction of chemical process plant and heat exchangers, an ingredient for superalloys in aircraft engines, and spacecraft and as the carbide in hard metal cutting tools also with tungsten carbide and cobalt binders.

90% of current niobium usage is for structural steel, especially high strength low alloy (HSLA) steels with up to 1% niobium, and in heat resisting steels and superalloys (iron, nickel, or cobalt based). The balance of usage is in superconductive magnets, high refractive index glass, piezoelectric devices, as single crystal lithium niobate in surface acoustic wave filters for television sets and similar equipment, as an alloying addition to zirconium for nuclear reactor fuel tubes, and as a carbide in cutting tools with tungsten and tantalum carbides.

Gippsland has a 50/50 joint venture agreement with the Egyptian government. The joint venture company is Tantalum Egypt, in which Tantalum International has a 50% share with the Egyptian Geological Survey and Mining Authority (EGSMA), a statutory body, holding the remaining 50%.

In the 1970's, EGSMA worked with both Russian and Italian exploration ventures, but the project was mothballed due to low prices and lack of suitable technologies for exploitation of the ore.