LABORATORY AND CHEMICAL ANALYSIS 2

Iron Content.

The total iron content present in these samples, reported as F2O3T in Assay Results pages, is consistent. It ranges between 5.34%-5.96%. However in the actual rock samples iron exists both as Fe+2 as well as Fe+3.

A titration analysis was performed at the lab to distinguish between these two types of atoms. The laboratory results for the current 17 samples (see Assay Results 1) range between F2O3 2.86-4.45%, FeO 1.33-2.37%, with a total of F2O3T between 5.34%-5.96%.

Commercially, deposits containing 2% to 5% F2O3 can be used in the manufacture of colored glass and some ceramics. Only a few deposits in the world are sufficiently low in iron, or have iron in a form that could be inexpensively removed, for use in clear glass or ceramic manufacture.

Magnetic separation, however, after drying and crushing can sometimes reduce the dark iron mineral content, especially in those cases where the syenite rock exhibits large grained crystalline texture.

The nepheline syenite at Table Mountain consists of a medium to fine grained texture. Such a texture generates a higher milling cost to achieve smaller particles to free the iron. It is believed that most of iron is hosted in non-magnetic minerals.*

Weather effects on iron content.
In the case of the Table Mountain’s ore, the iron mineral content (FeO) is suspected to be only fractionally in the form of magnetite, which is a residual mineral caused by the weathering and oxidizing process of acmite and dark iron minerals. This fraction could be extracted from the ore by magnetic means when the rock is milled to the proper size. The bulk of the iron content (Fe2O3) however, seems to be tied up in sodium iron pyroxene, a nonmagnetic mineral known as aegirine.** (See the above chart).

*A good feldspar-nepheline concentrate should be less than <0.4% Fe2O3. In nepheline syenites minor amounts of iron are observed in the alkali feldspar (Platt 1996). Iron concentrations are frequently higher in sanadine than orthoclase and microcline, which typically contain <0.2% Fe. The iron content in the rock is related to magma temperature. Secondary magmatic intrusions, which have not been detected at Table Mountain, seem to play a role in reducing the iron content in nepheline syenites.

**also known as acmite, NaFeSi2O6.