High purity alumina is not alumina

Speaker: Professor Sara Couperthwaite

Abstract: There is a difference between high purity alumina and alumina. Also, that there is a different approach to undertaking commercial research even though you are still doing fundamental research. You need to understand what the commercial outcomes or drivers are before planning the research and know the target markets for the technology/products you are developing.

Bio: Professor Sara Couperthwaite is an industrial chemist with over 15 years’ experience in value-adding mining wastes and optimising industrial processes. She works at Queensland University of Technology's School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering, and is Director of the Faculty of Engineering group STRATA (Sustainable Transformation of Resources for Advanced Technology Applications). Her primary research focuses on developing sustainable mineral processes for mining waste streams. She currently leads a $10M research program with Lava Blue to demonstrate the production of high purity alumina (HPA) from multiple feedstocks, such as clay, gibbsite, and aluminium-rich mineral producer waste streams at mini-plant scale.