LAS VEGAS, March 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Patriot Gold Corp. (OTC Bulletin Board: PGOL) today announced initiation of a series of metallurgical tests for its Moss Mine Gold Project, the largest reported gold resource in the State of Arizona. The Moss Mine Gold Project is located 10 miles east of Bullhead City, Arizona and approximately 70 miles southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The testing, which is being done by Kappes, Cassiday and Associates at its Reno, Nevada facility, will focus on the amenability of the Moss deposit to heap leaching gold/silver recovery.
Core from Moss will be tested in four column leach tests with crush sizes up to 2 inches. The crushed ore will be leached in 5 feet high columns for a minimum of 200 days. The tests are expected to determine maximum obtainable gold and silver recoveries using leaching as well as the leach times needed for maximum recovery.
In 2008 Patriot conducted the first column leach tests done at Moss using METCON research of Tucson, Arizona. Three column leach tests were conducted using 80 percent passing 1 inch, 1/2 inch and 1/4 inch crush sizes. These test charges were reconstituted and loaded into 4 inch diameter PVC columns to a height of approximately 3.5 meters. The material was leached for 109 days. The results of these tests show maximum extractions were from the 1/4 inch crush size which recovered 66.3% of the gold and 42.1% of the silver. However, recovery curves for both gold and silver were not flat after 109 days. Recoveries were still increasing which indicates longer leach times will improve recoveries even further. Reagent consumption for all tests was normal.
At Round Mountain and several other heap leach operations in Nevada, leaching is conducted for several years on the same leach pile, resulting in improved recoveries and more favorable economic metrics.
Patriot Gold plans continuing work in 2010 on advancing the Moss Mine Gold Project as a bulk mineable open pit heap leachable gold/silver deposit.
