Events

Every year, we extract 9 billion tonnes of metal ores and in the process, we create a 350billion tonne waste problem, destroy tropical habitats and carbon sinks, releasing toxic substances into the environment and emissions into the atmosphere. While metals do not have renewable substitutes, they can be recovered and recycled – that’s the good news. The bad news is, we currently do not have enough metal in the system to close the loop and we will need to inject a lot of virgin metal to provide for an additional 3 billion people this century.

The Sustainable Minerals Institute’s Production Centres, the W.H. Bryan Mining & Geology Research Centre (BRC) and Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC), have exciting PhD opportunities for engineering, science and geology students.

Process mineralogy is typically related to detailed examinations of metallic ores and the relationship between mineralogical properties and mineral processing. However, process mineralogical techniques are widely used within other mineral sectors as well, such as on industrial minerals, although the main objectives of such investigations can be different.

Trying to improve energy efficiency and modelling the energy of size reduction is one of the most important problems we face in comminution research. But regrettably, even the very definition of “energy efficiency” is elusive. The development of better grinding devices and circuits that use less of the world’s limited energy resources requires a clearer understanding of the relationship between energy and particle size.

The Global Mineral Sands industry is predominantly focused on the production of titanium and zirconium bearing minerals such as ilmenite, rutile and zircon. However, in recent years there has been a shift in the attention of both explorers and producers to consider the minor rare earth bearing minerals of monazite and xenotime.

Increasing complexity of ore deposits requires better prediction of comminution properties.

‘Enhanced Process Technologies’ (EPT’s) can provide genuine step change improvements to greenfield and brownfield projects. This presentation discusses EPTs, barriers to adoption and how to navigate those barriers in order to improve economic and environmental outcomes.

The seminar will provide a guided tour through a completely novel theory that can be used to generate a closed analytical solution to the physics of froth flotation, in a manner that is completely fundamental, yet robust and simple to use.

This talk will begin with two keys premises: that landscape change is an intrinsic part of mining and industrial development; and that novel ways of understanding landscapes can open up new possibilities for their future.

This presentation focuses on research developments at Monash University where drones have been combined with high performance compute and computer vision techniques, in order to remotely sense or sample our planet.

When considering safety, especially in operating mines, the reporting of incidents and the language used to describe them really matters. Natural Language Processing can now be used to classify and detect new classifications of incidents and detect previously unseen combinations of hazards and behaviours, allowing for the development of meaningful and targeted safety intervention programs.

Minerals in a Sustainable World - workshop sessions day 2 of QUEX Symposium

A study of Co-rich samples from the Eastern Mount Isa Block was undertaken to constrain the IOCG mineral system and evaluate HREE prospectivity. Although these deposits are interpreted to have had a granitic source, the element association includes metals not normally concentrated in silicic melts e.g., Co, Ni, Sc and PGE's.

The University of Queensland and the University of Exeter will host the Inaugural QUEX International Symposium: Fostering Global Sustainability and Wellbeing on Thursday 25 and Friday 26 July 2019.

The aim of the conference is to provide students with the opportunity to hone their presentation skills and interact with industry professionals.

The UQ Mining and Resources Forum aims to connect researchers working across all aspects of the industry to share ideas and develop collaboration and research projects.

Join us for afternoon tea to kick off the week's activities. For those of you arriving from overseas it's a good way to get your bearings

The 3MT is an academic competition that challenges PhD students to describe their research within three minutes to a general audience. 3MT celebrates the discoveries made by research students and encourages you to communicate the importance of your research to the broader community.

Metallurgical testing is critical to a minerals project development. There are some key questions that need to be answered at each stage of a project from Scoping, to Prefeasibility and to Detailed feasibility and a key component is the process parameters evaluated during metallurgical testing.

For decades the minerals industry has been challenged by inherent variability of ore deposits. Quantifying this characteristic of orebodies and estimating its impact on the process performance is becoming increasingly important because the mining industry needs to extract resources with lower grades and more complexities.

A decade of research on the nature of relationships between communities and the mining companies that work alongside them, has demonstrated that community acceptance, or social licence, depends on deeper trust in their relationships

With the decline of in-house expertise, in both the research organisations and end users of technology, Clarity bridges the implementation gap of new technologies and industry solutions.

Utilisation of a processing asset extends beyond the number of hours it runs for. When mines start to approach the end of their life, significant redundant capacity opens up in the mines processing assets. Is this capacity really redundant or can we re-think our approach to keep them delivering value at the design rate?

The Complex Orebodies program has now been going for 15 months. The program has the aim of identifying the challenges and solutions related to responsible unlocking of Complex Orebodies - orebodies which are currently inaccessible due to complexities across the range of Social, Environmental, Governance and Technical areas. This presentation will provide an update on the overall program, its performance against the original objectives, and future plans.

The seminar is linked to the risk factors preventing the utilisation of 75% of the world's large known copper resources.  A picture will be painted of how being able to link the processing route to the knowledge of primary rock properties can enable modelling, and therefore risk reduction and potential acceptance by the industry, of dramatically different approaches to the mining process.  Linking technical understanding to mapping routes that can dramatically change social benefit, environmental impact, water and energy usage, tailing and waste management, and long-term society benefit from mineral resources.