Summer and Winter Research Programs for Undergraduates

BACKGROUND:

Global demand for minerals and metals, particularly copper and gold, has risen and is forecast to continue rising in the decades to come. Indeed, Batterham (2017) quotes that demand in 2050 will be double that in 2015. The quality of deposits of these materials is decreasing, with them tending to be located at greater depths, be hosted in harder rock matrices, be of lower grade and of a more complex, finer grained and disseminated mineralogy. As such, the costs of processing these deposits, to enable extraction of the valuable metals, have increased and will continue to do so unless novel technologies to reduce costs are developed and deployed.

Comminution is especially challenged in the face of likely future ores. Comminution is the reduction of solid materials from one average particle size to a smaller average particle size, by crushing, grinding, cutting, vibrating, or other processes. Comminution is currently the most energy intensive process used in minerals operations. This will only increase for harder ores, with more disseminated, finer grained, complex mineralogies which will require finer grinding, and thus more energy input, to enable a subsequent separation to occur. High Voltage Pulse (HVP) technology is a selective comminution process designed to decrease the energy required to liberate valuable materials and enable their separation, such that the contained metals can then be extracted.

HVP comminution applies electrical energy directly to ore fragments to achieve selective breakage of particles containing metalliferous mineral grains. In the past 15 years, the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) has conducted extensive research using HVP electrical comminution technology for the mineral industry and have become the leaders in this field. Three major applications for the mining industry have been identified and explored by the research team to date:

• Pre‐weakening – HVP generates cracks/microcracks which pre‐weaken ore particles for improved downstream comminution circuit energy efficiency or higher circuit throughput in a particular comminution design;
• Pre‐concentration – This selectivity allows for early gangue rejection as well as decreasing the economic cut‐off grade, by turning waste into ore;
• Enhanced Liberation – HPV results in preferential liberation of minerals resulting in improved recovery in the downstream separation processes. HVP can potentially enable alternative separation technologies, such as coarse particle flotation, to be viable.

Research to date has shown HVP has significant potential to address many current and future mineral processing challenges. Nonetheless, barriers remain to industrial uptake of the HVP technology.  Fundamental knowledge gaps, around ore composition and amenability to HVP, and the optimum means of incorporating this technology and the benefits it provides, into mineral processing circuits exist.

High Voltage Pulse Technology is a potential game-changer in the industry and is therefore a large and exciting research initiative at the JKMRC. The successful applicant will work with researchers and undertake various studies and tasks on HVP, including experimental and analysis of results, in order to obtain a better understanding of the responses of ores with different mineralogy to this novel technology.  They will gain valuable knowledge about the HVP process as well as learn technical and laboratory skills relevant to the mining industry.

PROJECT:

The JKMRC has conducted extensive research using High Voltage Pulse pre-treatment of mineralised ores.  Most of the research done to date has used a commercial HVP unit in batch mode which is slow and time consuming.  The JKMRC has installed a Flexible HVP Testing Facility and has recently designed a novel small-scale continuous HVP system.  The objective of this project is to optimise the new processing unit and to investigate different parameters relevant to its efficient operation with respect to ore-breakage and pre-treatment of ores.  These include:

1. Operating settings – voltage, pulse rate, etc.
2. Electrode configuration
3. Operating mode, etc.

This is an industry focused and sponsored project with potential industrial applications.

Project duration and delivery: 6 weeks duration. The applicant will need to be on-site at the Indooroopilly Mine Site for the duration of the project.

Expected outcomes and deliverables: The successful applicant will be working with researchers and a PhD Student on this project. It is envisaged that the applicant will gain valuable experimental and data analysis skills from the work to be undertaken.  These include:

• Exposure to the mining industry
• Training on a variety of sample preparation equipment and analysis tools
• Experience in developing and executing experimental plans and methodologies
• Exposure to HVP technology and its benefits to the mining industry
• Hands-on experience with the operation of the novel small-scale continuous HVP unit developed at the JKMRC
• Investigating the performance of HVP pre-treatment on a particular ore type
• Data collection and analysis skills

At the completion of the project, the successful applicant will be asked to produce a report and/or an oral presentation of their project. They will also have an opportunity to generate publications from their research work.

Suitable for: This project is open to 3rd – 4th year students with a background in mining, minerals processing or chemical engineering are preferred, however other applicants are also welcome.

Primary Supervisor: Dr Christian Antonio.

Further information: Interested applicants are encouraged to contact Dr Christian Antonio to discuss this project in more detail, prior to submission of their online application.

Being able to efficiently recover coarse particles by flotation would enable minerals processing operations to significantly reduce the power these operations consume to grind rocks into fine powders and would open safer and more water efficient options for tailings management.

This project seeks to determine the effect that dosing collector as an aerosol has on the flotation behaviour of coarse particles and to understand the mechanisms driving that behaviour. Traditionally, collectors are dosed to a flotation system as a solution and adsorb onto the mineral surfaces at the solid-liquid interface. However, thermodynamic theory predicts that collector adsorption is greater at the solid-gas interface, so dosing collector as an aerosol together with the air that forms the air bubbles in the flotation system should result in greater collector adsorption onto the mineral surfaces. This in turn should increase the flotation recovery of coarse particles because these particles require more hydrophobic surfaces to be able to float.

This topic will be investigated by performing laboratory scale flotation tests on a complex sulphide ore (chalcopyrite-pyrite) to compare the flotation performance between different collector dosing methods 

Duration and delivery: 6 weeks duration. The applicant will need to be on-site at the Indooroopilly Mine Site for the duration of the project.

Expected outcomes and deliverables: The applicant will primarily be tasked with assisting to prepare the flotation products for assay. Specifically, this will likely involve wet and dry sieving of samples, pulverising samples and filling sample cups for assay. While sample preparation will take up most of the applicant’s time, they will also have exposure to the full suite of laboratory processes required to perform the experiments for this project, including rod milling, flotation, chemical and water make-up, calibration of pulp chemistry probes and grade measurement using XRF equipment.

Suitable for:  This project is suitable for UQ students seeking skills in minerals processing laboratory techniques. The ideal applicant will be comfortable with performing repetitive tasks with care and accuracy.

Primary Supervisor: Associate Professor Liza Forbes

Further information: Interested applicants are encouraged to contact Associate Professor Liza Forbes to discuss this project in more detail, prior to submission of their online application

In mineral processing, the valuable minerals are separated from the waste material by froth flotation. In this physical-chemical process, mineral particles are mixed with water (pulp) and chemical reagents are added to alter the surfaces of the minerals of interest. These particles are then collected by attachment to air bubbles rising to the top of the flotation cell. The surface properties of the minerals play a key role during this process and determine the separation efficiency.

State-of-art, cutting-edge biotechnology can offer a pathway for the development of a new generation of flotation reagents that would replace the use of conventional toxic chemicals in mineral processing, contributing to more sustainable and environmentally friendly mining practices. This project aims to test the application of novel bioreagents developed to target and modify the surfaces of copper minerals and evaluate the resulting surface properties, such as hydrophobicity.

Project Duration & Delivery: 6 weeks duration. The applicant will need to be on-site at the Indooroopilly Mine Site for the duration of the project.

Expected outcomes and deliverables:  The successful applicant will complete laboratory work where different bioreagents will be tested and compared with traditional reagents used in flotation. They will undertake contact angle measurements to ascertain mineral hydrophobicity and data analysis. The outcomes of this work will help determine the efficacy of the new reagents compared with the traditional reagents used in the flotation of copper minerals.

Suitable for: This project is open to applications from UQ students with an engineering or science background. One student will be selected for this project.

Primary Supervisor: Dr Susana Brito e Abreu

Further information: Interested applicants are encouraged to contact Dr Susana Brito e Abreu to discuss this project in more detail, prior to submission of their online application

This project involves analysing research and conducting lab experiments to determine gases produced from coal seam at different temperature, humidity and airflow conditions. 

Project duration and delivery: 6 weeks duration. Full-time on-site attendance at the UQ St Lucia Campus is required.

Expected outcomes and deliverables:  Applicants can expect to engage with leading experts, design and conduct experiments, and analyse and interpret results.

Suitable for: This project is open to UQ students with an understanding of chemistry and of doing laboratory experiments.

Primary Supervisor:  Professor David Cliff

Further information: Interested applicants are encouraged to contact Professor David Cliff to discuss this project in more detail, prior to submission of their online application

This project involves analysing industry safety data to derive meaningful insights into how to prevent recurrence.

Project Duration and delivery: 6 weeks duration. Full-time onsite attendance at the UQ St Lucia Campus is required.

Expected outcomes and deliverables: The applicant can expect to use leading approaches to analyse incidents. Project outcomes will lead to a publication and/or presentation to industry.

Suitable for: This project is open to UQ students with an interest in safety, risk and/or forensic engineering.

Primary Supervisor: Professor Maureen Hassall

Further information: Interested applicants are encouraged to contact Professor Maureen Hassall to discuss this project in more detail, prior to submission of their online application.

The are many, many factors and variables that affect the floatability of ore particles. This includes their geology, geomorphology, particle size, particle texture, electrochemistry and hydrodynamic properties.

A massive dataset has been accumulated over the past few years - a first of its kind  - that documents the values of these various factors for pyrite and chalcopyrite. But the challenging task ahead is to determine which factors are the most important for determining whether particles formed from those minerals will separate in a floatation cell, a key unit operation in minerals processing operations.

This project focussed on applying a data analysis tool called Causal Network Topology Analysis (CaNeTA), a digraph based method, alongside other statistical techniques, to work on a subset of the full dataset to begin this characterisation.

Duration and delivery: 6 weeks duration. Full-time onsite attendance at the Indooroopilly Mine Site is required.

Expected outcomes and deliverables: From this project, the student can expect to gain:

• Deeper understanding of minerals processing operations, particularly in the relationships between ore characteristics from core samples and floatation performance.
• How to apply the CaNeTA method to a large dataset.
• Potential opportunity to publish a conference or journal paper, depending on the nature and quality of the resultant work.
• Access to a network of researchers across the Sustainable Minerals Institute, for the student to discuss potential future research opportunities with, if desired.

Suitable for: This project is open to a UQ-enrolled student who has just finished their 2^nd or 3^rd year of:

• Chemical Engineering/Minerals Processing Engineering
• Geology/Earth Science
• Chemistry/Geochemistry
• Mathematics  - with an interest in applied network/graph theory and/or statistics

Primary Supervisor: Associate Professor Liza Forbes; Dr Ben Seligmann

Further information: Interested applicants are encouraged to contact either Associate Professor Liza Forbes or Dr Ben Seligmann to discuss this project in more detail, prior to submission of their online application.