Yabulu tailings ‘ full of riches’

A FORMER general manager of the Yabulu nickel refinery says cobalt contained in the plant’s tailings dams could be worth as much as $ US3.5 billion ($ A4.9 billion).

The assessment is based on current global prices for cobalt.

Orestes Trifilio was general manager operations at the plant from 1998 to 2003, when it was operated by BHP Billiton’s nickel division.

Mr Trifilio, the owner and president of Mintech SRL in the Dominican Republic, said past estimates indicated there could be as much as 63,000 tonnes of recoverable cobalt in the dams.

Cobalt is an essential ingredient in the manufacture of batteries for electric cars.

“That is out of 70,000 tonnes of cobalt contained the 63,000 tonnes could potentially be recovered,” Mr Trifilio said.

He said due to a changing world clamouring for environmentally clean products, there was now unprecedented demand for cobalt – a co- product of nickel processing.

These are products that are dependent on battery power rather than fossil fuels.

“What has changed in a dramatic and explosive way is the world’s understanding of the need for a clean future,” Mr Trifilio said.

“This necessitates the exponential development of technology in general, a lot of it requiring cobalt as a key component.”

He said, while batteries were at the centre of this growing demand for cobalt, “many other applications” were also driving demand.

Mr Trifilio said that in 2001 and 2002 he joined senior technical staff at Yabulu while they explained state- of- theart developments they were undertaking with cobalt to Japanese clients.

“Their cell phone batteries’ loading capacity needed to be improved and our technical staff were helping them do it. Yabulu, but especially its people, were at the sharp end of development and knowledge of cobalt products at the time,” he said.

He said the batteries for the electric vehicle revolution were at the forefront of resurgent demand for cobalt.

But there were other changes as well.

Mr Trifilio said batteries for electrical distribution systems and accumulators for the renewable energy industry were creating an overpowering demand for cobalt.

“Australia is a leader in several of these ( cobalt- related) fields,” Mr Trifilio said.

He said, in his opinion, the recovery of cobalt from the Yabulu tailings dams was viable.

He said this recovery would involve the implementation of a new process involving mixing the cobaltcontaining tailings with what are known as “virgin ores” – “new or fresh ores” brought into the processing plant that would contain “significant quantities of magnesium”.

Mr Trifilio said previously ores with significant amounts of magnesium had not been processed at Yabulu due to limitations in the Caron Process – a method of extricating nickel and cobalt from ore.

He said new extraction methodologies meant that all ores were acceptable and magnesium oxide would be a by- product of these new technologies.

Mr Trifilio said, based on current pricing, magnesium oxide would generate revenues equal to or better than those generated by cobalt.

“In fact, magnesium becomes an element that is needed to move the process forward. It becomes a byproduct and an important revenue generator,” he said.

Mr Trifilio could not be certain about quality or quantity, but said he was “sure” there was still magnesiumrich nickel ore in the ground at Greenvale.

It was from these Greenvale deposits north- west of Townsville that nickel ore was railed to the plant at Yabulu.

Accessible nickel reserves suitable for the process were exhausted by late 1989.

In order to keep the plant operational, ore was shipped in from New Caledonia, the Philippines and Indonesia until the plant was closed by Clive Palmer in 2016.

Mr Trifilio said the mining and processing of nickel ores around the world was sustainable into the long- term.