Welcome to the July/August09 edition of the CSRP Newsletter. If you wish to have anything included in the newsletter, please email Lisa Laurie at lisa.laurie@csrp.com.au
We submitted our application for CRC for By-product Utilisation (CBU) in the 12th CRC Selection Round on the afternoon of Friday 14 August! Twenty-one participant declarations were signed and included in the bid. Many strong letters of support came from potential project sponsors who were unable to formally commit to the bid at this time.
Putting the bid together in such a short time was a tremendous collaborative effort. Tasks included meeting with various alumina, power and cement producers; meeting with state MPs and government departments; scoping out the proposed research programs; and estimating the expected impact and value.
The next step is to prepare some detailed proposals on specific research projects, which are due in October. Following this, interviews with the selection panel will be held in Canberra during November/December and final selections are expected by the end of December.
I will keep you posted on any updates, and as usual, please contact me on 08 6436 8734 or stevan.green@csrp.com.au if you have any queries.
The remainder of this newsletter covers the ongoing business and highlights of CSRP during July and August.
Stevan Green
CEO
The Sustainable Development Indicators for the Minerals Industry (SDIMI) conference was held on 6-8 July on the Gold Coast and was chaired by our Sustainable Development Program Leader, Prof David Brereton, from the University of Queensland.
The event was a huge success, with over 160 delegates attending from over 12 different countries including Canada , South Africa , Germany and Australia . Presentations were varied and covered topics such as sustainability reporting, human development in mining zones, sustainable futures, optimising mine site design, sustainability roadmaps, social conflict and mining, policy development, remote sensing, and life cycle assessments.
Various CSRP staff members chaired sessions – including Stevan Green, Dan Churach, Glen Corder (UQ), Philip Bangerter (Hatch), Sharif Jahanshahi (CSIRO) and Andrew Murphy (Hatch).
Stevan Green chaired the CSRP-run Sustainability Assessment Forum. To "plant the seeds" for discussion, a panel of four sustainability practitioners delivered specific examples of sustainability initiatives (successful or otherwise) or vital characteristics, drawing on their experience, needed to drive sustainability initiatives to practical outcomes in the minerals industry. The panel comprised:
Important messages emerged from each presentation - not all on the same theme as the backgrounds of the panel were distinctly different. These messages from the panellists highlighted:
The outcomes from the Forum have been documented and submitted to the WA Mining Club annual in response to an invited editorial.
> View photographs of the event at www.ausimm.com.au/sdimi2009/
The world's second Positron Emission Particle Tracking (PEPT) facility in Cape Town, South Africa was officially opened on 4 August 2009 with a welcoming address, a tour of the facilities and an informal dinner.
PEPT is based on the tracking of a single tracer particle which has been labelled with a radionuclide that decays via beta-plus decay, within the field of view of a modified PET camera. This provides the basis for a technique for the characterisation and visualisation of particulate flow within aggressive industrial environments, such as tumbling mills, flotation cells and powder mixers.
The new laboratory is situated at iThemba LABS (national cyclotron centre) and funding was provided in-part by CSRP along with other international collaborators.
> Visit www.pept.uct.ac.za for more information on the PEPT facility
Stevan Green presented "Sustainability - Big Picture" on Thursday 30 July to a joint session of extractive metallurgy fourth year students from the WA School of Mines, University of Queensland and Murdoch University.
The session is part of a semester-long course (Process Design Project) which is a collaborative final year course run under the Metallurgical Education Partnership (MEP) sponsored by the Minerals Tertiary Education Council (Minerals Council of Australia). The course focuses on student groups, comprised of students from the three partner universities, designing a metallurgical processing plant using actual industry data.
The writing course "Writing Clear Science" ran on 8-10 July under the tutelage of Dr Marina Hurley. Seven CSRP and five Parker Centre postgraduate students participated in the course.
Dr Jim Avraamides presented a talk entitled "An overview of the mineral resource industry in Australia" to the Australia Student Mineral Venture school students on Tuesday 7 July.
Dr Dan Churach lectured a group of high school extended students from All Saints College on Thursday 9 July, giving them an overview of the mineral resource sector in Australia and some insight to career opportunities within the extractive metallurgy discipline. Both talks were given at Murdoch University , after which the students rotated through three 90-minute laboratories familiarising them with comminution, hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy. Murdoch staff members Dr Aleks Nikoloski and Ken Seymour along with Graeme Thompson (current PhD student) and Sam McDonald (CSRP student alumni) contributed to the hands-on sessions.
PhD student, Di Nichols, presented her paper on "Increasing teachers' content knowledge by developing partnerships with scientists" at the annual conference of the Australian Science Education Research Association (ASERA) held in Geelong on 1-4 July.
> Visit the Education section of our website for information on future events
A successful forum for the Geopolymer Program team was hosted by CSRP HQ in Perth on 15 and 16 July. Enthusiastic project participants from Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth attended the event, which gave sponsors an update on how the work is progressing and included presentations by various PhD students.
The Sustainable Development Program prepared a proposal for a live SUSOP® case study in Africa. Potential case studies are also being discussed with other organisations. A SUSOP® workshop is planned for August 2009.
An undergraduate student funded by the Comminution Program is currently in Germany at the University of Erlangen and will continue the fine breakage work which Malcolm Powell has done some trials on. Two other undergraduate students are working on Comminution projects this semester.
The commercialisation of the ReSand® framework is progressing. After a successful demonstration of using ReSand® in road construction south of Perth, initial monitoring results from the Department of Agriculture and Food WA are encouraging. Another trial of using ReSand® in an infiltration barrier is awaiting analysis of data.
As reported previously, the Geopolymer Alliance prospectus was printed and posted in May to key contacts within the construction, mining, and power industries. Ten organisations are confirmed members of the Geopolymer Alliance with another six expected to join by the end of the month.
The Geopolymer Alliance is a member of RILEM (International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures) and its' technical committee on Alkali Activated Materials. This committee is charged with the responsibility of setting up European standards, test methods and codes of practice for AAM's (geopolymers). Visit www.rilem.net for more information.
Additionally, the Geopolymer Alliance:
In parallel, Geopolymers Foundation Ltd. ("the Company") [ACN 135 319 685] was established on 17 August 2009 to manage, operate and administer the Geopolymer Alliance in accordance with the Alliance By-Laws. The arrangements for the establishment and operation of the Alliance complete an existing Board resolution for the Business Manager to: "Establish Geopolymers Foundation Ltd. (under the Corporations Act (Cwlth) 2001) as a wholly-owned subsidiary of SRP Management Ltd, for the purpose of establishing and operating the Geopolymer Alliance."
> Visit www.geopolymers.com.au for more information and to download the Prospectus
Geopolymer technology : An opportunity to enhance the sustainability of the mining and construction industries.
If you are aware of any upcoming events that would be of interest to other CSRP members, please email the details to Lisa Laurie. Listed below are some of the upcoming events and a complete list can be found in the Events section of the website.
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 Lisa Laurie a copy of the paper and the reference for the publication. Listed below are some publications received this month and a complete list can be found on the Publications section of the website.
> Email Lisa Laurie to obtain the most recent Request to Publish form, Standard Acknowledgement form or CSRP logo