Dr Sibele Nascimento is a mining and resource engineer specialised in sampling, characterisation, geometallurgy and processing of mine waste deposits.
Sibele graduated with a BSc in Mining from the Federal University of Ouro Preto (2011) and a MSc from the EMerald Erasmus Mundus Masters (2016), a program focused on characterisation, processing and modelling of georesources, undertaken at research institutions across Belgium, France, Sweden and Germany.
Professionally, Sibele interned at Samarco and focused her work on flotation of iron ores. After completing her MSc, Sibele undertook her PhD at the University of Tasmania as part of the Australian Research Council's Industrial Transformation Research Hub for Transforming the Mining Value Chain (TMVC) under the Centre for Ore Deposit and Earth Sciences (CODES). During her PhD, Sibele investigated the long-term hydrochemical and environmental impacts of mine waste disposal in the Queen-King River system, which represents one of the worst acid mine drainage (AMD) cases in Australia. She also studied the mineralogy, geochemistry and geophysics properties of tailings stored at the King River delta to evaluate AMD potential of the tailings and possible sources of valuable metals that could be metallurgically recovered from this material.
Currently, Sibele is working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the WH Bryan Mining Geology Research Centre. She is involved in leading metallurgical programs for mine waste valorisation and applications of geophysics to mine wastes sites across Australia.
Specific areas of research include:
• Reprocessing of tailings deposits
• Characterisation of mine wastes, including geochemistry, mineralogy and environmental properties
• Application of geophysical methods to tailings deposits to evaluate their internal structure.