Enhanced metal recovery from a modified Caron leach of mixed nickel-cobalt intermediate concentrate. Nickel metal production from lateritic deposits involves dissolution in acid followed by purification and selective alkaline precipitation of the nickel and cobalt as hydroxide phase. Hydroxides from several plants are transported to a central refinery where the hydroxide is redissolved in ammoniacal solutions and nickel and cobalt are separated and reduced to metal.
This project will examine t ....Enhanced metal recovery from a modified Caron leach of mixed nickel-cobalt intermediate concentrate. Nickel metal production from lateritic deposits involves dissolution in acid followed by purification and selective alkaline precipitation of the nickel and cobalt as hydroxide phase. Hydroxides from several plants are transported to a central refinery where the hydroxide is redissolved in ammoniacal solutions and nickel and cobalt are separated and reduced to metal.
This project will examine the effect of preparation conditions and aging of the hydroxide precipitate on the refining process.
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Evolutionary Design for Ore Processing Plants. This project will investigate the use of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) in the design of ore processing plants. Ore processing is a major activity in the Australian mining industry, and a significant source of export dollars. Prior work has demonstrated that EAs can out-perform previous manual and automated design techniques for individual processing units. This project will apply EAs to the design of whole flowsheets containing arbitrary combination ....Evolutionary Design for Ore Processing Plants. This project will investigate the use of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) in the design of ore processing plants. Ore processing is a major activity in the Australian mining industry, and a significant source of export dollars. Prior work has demonstrated that EAs can out-perform previous manual and automated design techniques for individual processing units. This project will apply EAs to the design of whole flowsheets containing arbitrary combinations of different types of units. The complexity of typical flowsheet layouts will require new algorithms to discover improved designs in practical time, so parallel hardware, and new parallel EAs, will be utilised.
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