Benign recovery of precious metals from deep pristine environments. This project aims to extract precious metals from natural deposits conventional mining methods cannot reach. Glycine-peroxide systems can dissolve precious metals without pollution. Understanding these systems’ behaviour in natural orebodies could lead to in-situ leaching methods that complement conventional mining, especially in low grade deposits. This project intends to use a modern scientific workflow based on exploratory, d ....Benign recovery of precious metals from deep pristine environments. This project aims to extract precious metals from natural deposits conventional mining methods cannot reach. Glycine-peroxide systems can dissolve precious metals without pollution. Understanding these systems’ behaviour in natural orebodies could lead to in-situ leaching methods that complement conventional mining, especially in low grade deposits. This project intends to use a modern scientific workflow based on exploratory, descriptive and explanatory phases to model the coupled multi-physics of precious metals transport, introduce a high performance computing strategy for in-situ leaching, develop an experimental protocol that explains the recovery mechanisms, and propose optimal leaching patterns that maximise productivity.Read moreRead less
Maximisation of value in underground mine access design. This project represents a major advance in the problem of optimising the mine value associated with the access infrastructure of underground mines and providing powerful planning tools for management. The usefulness to the mining industry of the methods and algorithms the project is pioneering lies in their accuracy, flexibility and generality. Not only can they be used for benchmarking value in the design of specific mines, but they can ....Maximisation of value in underground mine access design. This project represents a major advance in the problem of optimising the mine value associated with the access infrastructure of underground mines and providing powerful planning tools for management. The usefulness to the mining industry of the methods and algorithms the project is pioneering lies in their accuracy, flexibility and generality. Not only can they be used for benchmarking value in the design of specific mines, but they can also determine the profitability or viability of mines under the use of new technologies. This is an important project for ensuring that Australia's mining industry remains efficient and internationally competitive. Given Australia’s economic dependence on mineral resources, it will also benefit the country as a whole.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130100457
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$360,945.00
Summary
Dynamic fracturing in shale rock through coupled continuum-discontinuum modelling. The research includes modelling the grain level fracturing of shale rock under dynamic loads. The outputs will have a direct impact on the development and optimisation of rock drilling and rock cutting technologies and will improve the operational efficiencies in which rock excavations are conducted.
Preventing extreme granular wear of geotechnical machinery. This project will investigate the mechanisms controlling the mechanical wear that is incurred while handling geomaterials such as sand, ore, coal and fragmented rock. The overarching aim is to help forecast and mitigate extreme wear conditions by analysing the microscopic forces that granular materials produce when in contact with moving metallic surfaces. The intended outcomes include a thorough understanding of these interfacial inter ....Preventing extreme granular wear of geotechnical machinery. This project will investigate the mechanisms controlling the mechanical wear that is incurred while handling geomaterials such as sand, ore, coal and fragmented rock. The overarching aim is to help forecast and mitigate extreme wear conditions by analysing the microscopic forces that granular materials produce when in contact with moving metallic surfaces. The intended outcomes include a thorough understanding of these interfacial interactions and an experimentally validated theory predicting wear rates for a range of materials and handling processes. The expected benefit of this project is to enhance the productivity and reliability of the mining and construction sectors by reducing wear-related machinery failures.Read moreRead less
Propagating fragmentation waves in granular materials. This project will conduct the first systematic study to understand and control fragmentation waves in granular systems subject to impact loading. The outcomes will be essential for geoscience including earthquakes and meteoritic impacts, and for many industries, including mining, mineral processes, petroleum production and pharmaceutics.
Maximising value in underground mine planning. Mining is crucial to Australia’s economy, contributing 8 per cent of GDP and 55 per cent of the value of goods exported. Working with mining companies Rand and Tribune, this project tackles issues faced in underground mine planning. While integrated optimisation of design and production in open cut mining is well established, no equivalent capability is available for underground mines. This project aims to develop innovative techniques to optimise t ....Maximising value in underground mine planning. Mining is crucial to Australia’s economy, contributing 8 per cent of GDP and 55 per cent of the value of goods exported. Working with mining companies Rand and Tribune, this project tackles issues faced in underground mine planning. While integrated optimisation of design and production in open cut mining is well established, no equivalent capability is available for underground mines. This project aims to develop innovative techniques to optimise the design of the access network and the production scheduling in an underground mine in order to maximise value over the life of the operation. The outcome intends to be a new strategic software tools for the sector, underpinning increased efficiency and sustainability of Australian mines as well as international competitiveness.Read moreRead less
A multi-scale theory of unsaturated porous media under extreme loading. Extreme loading induced by impacts, explosives or earthquakes generates stress wave propagation through unsaturated media; this can lead to rock fracturing and soil liquefaction and severely damage civil, mining and military infrastructures and operations. The project aims to develop a novel experimentally-validated theory, with associated models, for describing dynamic responses of unsaturated porous media subject to extrem ....A multi-scale theory of unsaturated porous media under extreme loading. Extreme loading induced by impacts, explosives or earthquakes generates stress wave propagation through unsaturated media; this can lead to rock fracturing and soil liquefaction and severely damage civil, mining and military infrastructures and operations. The project aims to develop a novel experimentally-validated theory, with associated models, for describing dynamic responses of unsaturated porous media subject to extreme loading. Our continuum framework will allow building constitutive models directly from saturation-dependent contact laws at the micro-scale. This will remove the need to use the site-dependent empirical models and thus give the derived constitutive models truly predictive capabilities.Read moreRead less