Associate Professor Longbin Huang, Program Leader and Principal Research Fellow at SMI will address the Korea University on an overview of the Sustainable Minerals Institute
The research is expected to deliver innovative and feasible technology and methodology to rehabilitate tailings - the most costly and challenging domains at mine sites and refineries, in order to significantly improve economic and ecological sustainability of mining and minerals industries in Australia and overseas.
Associate Professor Huang specialises in science and technology of ecological engineering of ferrous and base metal mine tailings (e.g., magnetite tailings, bauxite residues (or red mud), Cu/Pb-Zn tailings) into functional technosols and hardpan-based soil systems for sustainable tailings rehabilitation: geo-microbial ecology, mineral bioweathering, geo-rhizosphere biology, technosol-plant relations in mined environments.
Associate Professor Longbin Huang is currently a Principal Research Fellow, the Program Leader in Ecological engineering of soil-plant systems, within Environment Centres (CMLR), Sustainable minerals institute (SMI), in University of Queensland. Longbin graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Agronomy (soil science & Plant Physiology double major), PhD in Plant Environmental Physiology, with more than 25 years of experience in soil-plant relations and tailings rehabilitation. Longbin is serving as a member of research committee of Key laboratory of mined land rehabilitation, Ministry of Land and Resources, China.
Metal mine tailings (such as magnetite-Fe ore tailings, bauxite residues (red mud), and Cu-Pb-Zn tailings) are economically and environmentally the most challenging domains on metal mines and the innovation is expected to generate industry-wide impacts on sustainable tailings rehabilitation. My research closely engages mining and mineral processing industries in Australia and overseas, and firmly targets their needs for technological innovation to rehabilitate ferrous and base metal mine tailings. My research partners and sponsors include Glencore Ltd (formerly Xstrata Cu Australia) at Mt Isa Mines and Earnest Henry Mine, Karara Mining Ltd, Dexing Copper Mine (JiangXi Copper, China), MMG Ltd, and South32 Ltd. In late 2016, I was invited by Rio Tinto as the UQ-expert in tailings rehabilitation at the Gove Refinery Options Study - Innovation Workshop, discussing and developing research strategies for rehabilitating red mud ponds at Gove refinery. Most recently, I am leading a large ARC-Linkage project to investigate soil formation in magnetite tailings to offset large proportions of soil volumes required to cover the tailings for native plant rehabilitation, which is the first research project on tailings rehabilitation at industry scale in Australia.
For more information regarding Professor Longbin Huang's presentation in Korea please click here.
