Welcome to the April edition of the CSRP Newsletter. If you wish to have anything included in the newsletter, please e-mail Kelly Dwyer at kelly.dwyer@csrp.com.auor Clare Walton at clare.walton@csrp.com.au.
The request to publish and standard acknowledgement forms are located on Centric. Staff are reminded that any article or presentation that contains information from or references to CSRP projects must have a request to publish form sent to the Program Leader then on to CSRP HQ, and that standard acknowledgements are to be used. These documents can be downloaded from CRC Centric. Any questions regarding this please contact Kelly Dwyer ( kelly.dwyer@csrp.com.au) .
Congratulations to Jaco du Toit who has recently graduated with his Masters. Jaco’s thesis was entitled “ Thermodynamic Behaviour of Chlorine as a Minor Element in Metallurgical Melts” and he was supervised by Sharif Jahanshahi, CSIRO Minerals, Clayton and Prof Peter Gaylard , University of Cape Town .
We welcome several new students to our ranks. Ms Albena Bossilkov and Mr Dick van Beers will be completing their PhDs, through Curtin University , while both William Rickard and Megan Goldspink will be completing their Honours. Albena’s thesis will be on Regional Synergies and she is supervised by Prof Dong-ke Zhang (Curtin University), Dr Glen Corder (University of Queensland ) and Dr Chris Lund (GHD). Dick thesis is entitled “Application of cleaner production framework to develop regional synergies in heavy industrial areas: A case study of Kwinana” and is supervised by Prof Dong-ke Zhang (Curtin University). William and Megan, both at Curtin University , will be working in the area of Geopolymers and are supervised by Arie van Riessen.
The geopolymers team recently won beam time at the Australian National Beamline Facility, Photon Factory, Tsukuba Japan. The aim of the experiments at the Facility is to analyse the oxidation state and coordination chemistry of iron in a range of Austraian flyashes and geopolymers produced from these flyashes. This will assis in understanding the role of iron duritng the polymerisation process. Two of our PhD students will be travelling to Japan, with Nigel Chen-Tan being the main driver of this work and Ross Williams providing support.
In conjunction with CSRP , Curtin has been awarded two LIEF grants for analytical equipment, one for a Focussed Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscope (FIB-SEM) and the second an Integrated Advanced X-ray Diffraction Facility.
The proposed focussed ion beam scanning electron microscope (FIB-SEM) will be unique to WA and will establish an internationally significant facility enabling machining of micro components for a range of engineering and materials science applications. Of critical importance is that the facility will considerably enhance transmission electron microscope sample preparation for a range of materials that are not accessible using current sample preparation technology. Benefits to CSRP include specimens prepared from geopolymers and precursor material for transmission electron microscopy from highly localised regions. This capability will enhance our understanding of fundamental geopolymer science.
The proposed equipment in the Integrated Advanced X-ray Diffraction Facility will provide a unique facility for single crystal, powder and thin film structure elucidation using X-ray diffraction techniques. It will establish a facility with unique single crystal diffraction equipment (UWA), and new powder diffraction equipment including grazing incidence and reflectometry (Curtin). The major advantage for CSRP will be access to state-of-the-art diffraction facilities that will provide patterns collected at high resolution in short times allowing comprehensive characterisation of precursor and geopolymer samples.
Two specialist Thinky Mixers have been purchased by the geopolymer team for use at ANSTO and Curtin. These planetary centrifugal mixers use a combination of rotational motions at up to 400G to mix small quantities of highly viscous samples, such as geopolymers. They also de-aerate the samples in situ during the mixing and enable precise control. These mixers will greatly improve the reproducibility of geopolymer samples and allow better comparisons of work done in different locations.
The CSIRO, Clayton node of CSRP will soon take delivery of a new high speed video camera (jointly purchased by CSIRO and CSRP ) for use in the Heat Recovery from Dry Slag Granulation project. The new camera will enhance the capacity of the project in demonstrating the physical movement of material in slag treatment processes. The information that can be obtained from high speed video images allows us to develop an improved understanding of the fluid flow and heat transfer as well as generating unique data for the validation of CFD model of the process.
A thermal imaging camera has been purchased as part of the Improvement of Energy Efficiency of Rock Comminution through Reduction of Thermal Losses Project. This state of the art thermal camera, manufactured by CEDIP, is design to operate in extended short to mid infrared spectral range of 2 to 5 micrometers. Camera is of the cooled type which is precondition for high sensitivity of about 0.02 degrees Celsius. Camera is also characterised with high speed of 150 frames per second. This infrared camera is used to detect variation and measure temperature of rock fragments during and immediately after crushing.
If you are aware of any upcoming conferences that would be of interest to other CSRP members, please e-mail the details to Kelly Dwyer. Links to these conferences (where available) will be published in the newsletter each month.
It would be wonderful to keep our publications lists up to date. If you have anything that has been published as part of CSRP (including conference presentations), please send Kelly Dwyer a copy of or the reference for the publication. Listed below are publications received this month and a complete list can be found in the 2006 Publications and 2007 Publications sections.