Dr Christian Antonio specialises in the development and assessment of new technologies in the areas of ore sorting, ore pre-concentration and pre-weakening or ores.

Mineral Sorting and Separation:
Focused on the development of advanced technologies and sensing techniques for the detection, separation and upgrading of important minerals, such as copper, to maximise processing efficiencies. His work on novel technologies in this area includes MW/IR and HVP.

Microwave Processing:
Focused on promoting and applying the unique characteristics of microwaves as a novel processing technique in multiple industries including mining, oil & gas, waste remediation, chemical, food and energy, etc. 

Christian’s background is in chemical engineering and he obtained his PhD in materials processing. Prior to coming to the JKMRC he worked at the CSIRO (Minerals) and University of Nottingham where he conducted R&D on light metals production and microwave processing in a vast variety of industries including the minerals, energy, advanced materials and food. As a process engineer his expertise is in process development, in particular development of novel processes such as those that are developed at the JKMRC, and scaling these up from an idea to lab-scale to pilot-plant scale. He has been involved in large scale-up projects involving R&D development through to pilot-planting, commissioning and process optimisation as part of multi-disciplinary teams. Christian’s main research interest include Mineral Sorting and Separation and Microwave Processing.

Industry

Christian has been involved in applied research with the mining industry. He has been involved in the development and scale-up of novel processes such as CuNuWave (Rio Tinto), TiRO (Lightmetals Flagship), Vermiculite (UoN), Oil Drill Cuttings (UoN/NOV Brandt).

Collaborations

Christian actively collaborates with other Universities (UoN, Burapha University), Research Institutions (CSIRO, CRC-ORE) and Industry (Rio Tinto, Anglo, Newcrest, etc.) in his areas of interest.

Funding

The majority of his research funding has been from industry and CRCs.