Six patents registered for Marenica’s U-pgrade uranium extraction process
Marenica Energy Limited has been granted two certified Australian innovation Patents, three standard Australian Patents and a United States Patent over the entire U-pgrade process.
Marenica Energy Lim CEO, Murray Hill in the company’s Quarterly Activity Report for the period ending 31 December 2017 released this week said the patents give the company the sole and exclusive rights to the use or license of U-pgrade and puts them in a strong strategic position to benefit from the future use of U-pgrade in commercial applications.
“The granting of these patents confirms Marenica´s long-held belief that the process and know how is unique, inventive and represents a valuable commercial advance within the uranium extraction industry,” he added.
Marenica developed the U-pgrade uranium process to provide a viable pathway for development of the Marenica Uranium Project in Namibia. Marenica has since demonstrated U-pgrade to be effective on other surficial style uranium ores around the world.
According to Hill, this disruptive process technology potentially reduces the capital and operating costs by about 50% over standard process routes.
Meanwhile, Marenica has completed testwork on ore samples from many local calcrete hosted uranium sources, concluding that the mineralogy is similar for all deposits, and the Company’s proprietary U-pgrade process is expected to have a positive impact on the cost of U3O8 production from these styles of deposit.
Specifically, the Company completed an U-pgrade amenability testwork programme on ore samples from Paladin Energy Limited´s 75%-owned Langer Heinrich Uranium Mine.
The testwork, aimed at confirming the substantial benefits of Marenica´s proprietary U-pgrade process to LHM programme, was successful.
According to Hill both parties will determine the most suitable pathway for application of U-pgrade to the LHM low grade ore. Marenica is in various stages of discussions with a number of resource owners to enable Marenica to demonstrate the benefits of U-pgrade on their projects.
