Ximen Mining Corp (CVE:XIM) said option partner GGX Gold Corp (CVE:GGX) (OTCQB:GGXXF) had re-examined core from its Fall 2018 drill program at the Gold Drop project in British Columbia and had confirmed high-grade tellurium.
As reported earlier this month, the firm had planned to re-analyze select core samples. which were taken from the C.O.D. vein, which is in the Gold Drop Southwest Zone.
The tellurium results results from two drill holes COD18-67 and COD18-70, initially exceeded the upper 500 grams per tonne (g/t) analytical limit for tellurium.
The re-examination has shown COD18-67 hosted 129 g/t gold, 1154 g/t silver and 823 g/t tellurium over a 7.28-meter core length
Meanwhile, COD18-70 showed 107 g/t gold, 880 g/t silver and 640 g/t tellurium over a 6.90-meter core length.
In all, 14 drill core samples from the high-grade gold and silver intersections of drill holes COD18-67 and COD18-70 returned greater than the upper analytical limit of 500 g/t (grams per ton) for tellurium during initial analysis. The highest sample showed 3,860 g/t of tellurium. The lowest was 560 g/t.
Tellurium (Te) remains one of the rarest elements on earth and its production is a by-product of copper and gold mining.
Up to recently, the only use of tellurium has been alloying of other metals to increase the machinability of copper or to decrease the corrosive action of sulfuric acid on lead.
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Production of tellurium is limited, estimated to being around 800 metric tonnes per year. According to the USGS (United States Geological Survey), total production in 2007 was 107 metric tonnes.
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