Product Overview

As part of Kappes, Cassiday & Associates (KCA) on-going support for the minerals industry, KCA has developed the LIFTERBOTTLE™.  The LIFTERBOTTLE™ is a single mold testing vessel with integrated lifters utilized for bottle roll leach studies.

A rolling bottle leach test is a common analytical test used in determining if a constituent can be extracted from a solid.  As an analytical tool, a solution contacted with a solid in a rolling bottle leach test is one of the first tests an analytical chemist might utilize to determine the type and amount of leachable metals or other constituents present in a naturally occurring or by product material.  The application of this analytical test type is widely used in a variety of analytical, environmental and geochemical/metallurgical laboratories.

Simply said, a rolling bottle test consists of a bottle filled with known amounts of solid material and a liquid.  The solid material can be either a naturally occurring material or a man-made product that is sized according to the needs of the test work.  The liquid can have either an acid, neutral or basic pH and will typically contain a specific constituent intended to enhance the leaching.  In the most basic case, neutral water is used as the leaching solution.  The sealed bottle is then rolled on laboratory rolls for a specific period of time.  The test leach period can be short or long.  At designated time intervals and/or at the end of the leaching period the solution is sampled and analyzed for the constituents of interest.  The final solid residue material can be assayed as well for the constituents of interest so that a mass balance can be formulated and an extraction can be calculated.

Environmental characterization test work may employ a variety of leach conditions in rolling bottle tests to examine the possibility that a constituent might migrate from the solid into the surrounding soils, rocks or aquifers.

Geological type laboratories use rolling bottle roll tests as a first step in determining if a metal or non-metal can be extracted from either a primary or secondary mined product.

Historically, rolling bottle tests have been run in smooth walled bottles in which the thorough mixing of the solid with the solution is difficult if not sometimes nonexistent since the wetted material tends to slides along the smooth walls of the bottle rather than be constantly contacted with the solution.

After four years of development, KCA is proud to announce the LIFTERBOTTLE™, a three and one-half liter, wide mouth, HDPE bottle with integrated lifters cast into the walls of the bottle.  The mouth is 90 mm wide to allow for the introduction of coarse material and the bottle is designed so that it dumps quickly, thoroughly and cleanly.

In the LIFTERBOTTLE™, material collects on the lifters or shelves and is lifted up as the bottle rotates.  This action moves the material up and around in the bottle, allowing the material to freely fall towards the center of the bottle, thoroughly mixing the material with the leach solution.

KCA believes that better mixing has resulted in overall better test results as well as improved the reproducibility of the test results.

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Two images of the working product can be seen below: