Canada Silver Cobalt Works has installed a gravity pilot plant to process tailings from its Beaver mine and Castle cobalt and silver mines in Ontario.

The company will be testing high-grade stamp mill tailings from these mines using its Re-20x process to recover silver.

Stamp-mill tailings have been developed by crushing the rock with stamps, or heavy iron hammers.

The gravity pilot plant is a closed-loop system that includes a water recycling step. The two-stage gravity process uses a spiral concentrator to feed the concentrate to a conventional gravity table.

Canada Silver Cobalt Works has ordered a third gravity concentrating piece of equipment, which it expects to place between the spiral and gravity table.

The pilot plant will process one tonne per hour of high-grade silver tailings, the company said.

The company's Re-20x process is a hydrometallurgical approach for selective leaching to recover metals. The Re-20x method eliminates smelting, while its closed-loop system leads to zero discharge and reduces the presence of chemicals like arsenic.

Canada Silver Cobalt Works is also using the Re-20x process to extract rubidium at its Quebec gold operations.