From the other board. I want to post it here so it's easier to find in the future:
Johnale: Yes, if the ROF fails, the potential patent will be the saving grace.
Orelse: I don't believe that pulling chromite out of the Ring by helicopter would be financially feasible. Let's say you use a mid-size helicopter, or even a large. I rent helicopters very frequently while doing forestry work out west, so I have some rough numbers here. I'll use two separate machines as examples, a B2 (heavy-lift A-Star) and a 205.
Here are the run rates, dry:
B2: $1700/hr
205: $3585/hr
Here are the carrying capacities:
B2: 2500 pounds (1.25 ton)
205: 4000 pounds (2.0 ton)
(Pilots may insist only slightly lighter loads for a long sling, which might actually be more cost effective, as you shouldn't be moving things around at close to max carry capacity).
Number of trips required for 100 tons: (is this the correct amount we're looking for?)
B2: 80 trips
205: 50 trips
Fuel burn/hr:
B2: 185 litres/hr ($370/hr)
205: 385 litres/hr ($770/hr)
(based on $2/litre for Jet A, which is typical in somewhat remote locations)
Total cost/hr: (rent plus fuel)
B2; $2,070/hr
205: $4,355/hr
Round trip time:
B2: 3.53 hours
205: 3.53 hours
(Based on 300km each way to move ore from the Ring to Pickle Lake for off-loading onto truck transport, based on each machine flying at about 170km/hr cruise with a full sling attached).
Cost per trip:
B2: $7,310
205: $15,370
Cost to move 100 tons:
B2; $585,000
205: $769,000
Ok, well, I guess that's affordable. We'd only have to issue another 29m shares at 2 cents to pay for the B2, or 38m shares at 2 cents to pay for the 205.
Of course, the fuel would be less simple than outlines above. The machines would have to add a couple trips to fly a fuel bowser up to the Ring if there isn't suffient fuel already in place, since each of those two machines doesn't have a lot of excess fuel capacity. The B2 can go for about 2 hours 40 minutes, and the 205 for about three hours, which means that they'd certainly need to fuel at each end. Let's just round to $600k for a B2 or $800k for a 205. Those numbers are still affordable, if the desire is there.
However, what's the chance that there's 100 tons of chromite sitting at the suface, waiting to be picked up and slung out in a helicopter?
My guess is that a proper test scenario would source chromite ore from overseas, which could probably be brought to the test facilities significantly more cheaply than ore from the Ring. Or dig up one of the many chromite deposits in the US, and grab a hundred tons. Many of those are at grades which are actually equivalent or superior to the Ring deposits.
What's that? You're saying, "wait, there are no deposits in the US! The Ring is the only source in North America!" That's actually quite incorrect. There are well over a thousand identified deposits around the world, and hundreds in the US alone. However, many are not large enough to develop on a commercial scale, even though the grades may be superior to the Ring.
Here's some information about the 1124 deposits categorized by the USGS. Many are as low as 100 tons, but that's fine:
http://mrdata.usgs.gov/podchrome/
If you have Google Earth, open the KML file and you can click on each deposit to obtain some info. You can also see where they're grouped ... quite a few down the US west coast, a small string spread throughout Interior eastern US, and a small cluster between Sherbrooke and QC.
