Queensland has always been a big mining state, but The University of Queensland is striking a new claim with its Sustainable Minerals Institute, trading on its expertise in mines and minerals while capturing new grounds of social, environmental and economic sustainability.

On the surface, the newly formed Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) may never have many staff to call its very own, but the seven units networking beneath the SMI mantle represent a wealth of mining and minerals experience.

The University of Queensland's long history of international excellence in the minerals field has been fused into the SMI, which struck gold in the form of a $22 million partnership between UQ, industry and the Queensland Government to pioneer new research directions.

About three years ago, Vice-Chancellor Professor John Hay set the challenge to develop a new set of research and development activities relevant to the changing industry and Queensland's largest single exporter.

The result is the SMI, formed 2001/02, undertaking research activities, value-adding to existing areas of expertise and chipping into new territory such as the social, community and workforce issues associated with the minerals sector.

SMI Director, Professor Don McKee, said there was no university in this country or overseas with UQs wealth of skills and critical mass in the minerals area, nor its great and long-standing ability to link with industry.

"SMI's role is to identify the 'big-picture' issues facing the industry and put in place new research activities to tackle some of those issues and build on our known strengths," Professor McKee said.

"We have a tremendous intellectual base at UQ already and the SMI gives us the capacity to build it into a knowledge powerhouse for Queensland."

That intellectual base covers the entire minerals science chain, and includes mining geology, mining engineering, minerals' processing, health and safety, social responsibility and mine-site rehabilitation.

SMI's emergence reflects a changing international mood outlined by the Global Mining Initiative, which is driving the case for a future licence to operate, ensuring the industry meets social and environmental obligations along with economic imperatives.

Mapping out new research directions is the role of the SMI Board, a grouping of industry, University and Queensland Government heavyweights. Early tasks were to define sustainability and develop tools to better measure it, then incorporate the sustainability concept into the project evaluation stage, as well as the subsequent operational and remediation stages of mining and mineral projects.

The Queensland Government's $10 million contribution to SMI, matched by $10 million from industry and $2 million from the University, will help build a new home for SMI's seven constituent groups: the WH Bryan Mining Geology Research Centre; the Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation; the Division of Earth Sciences; the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining; the Minerals Industry Safety & Health Centre; the Division of Mining & Minerals Process Engineering and the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) (which will remain at its existing base at the Indooroopilly Mine). The SMI also works closely with other UQ groups such as the Division of Geographical Sciences and Planning.

Under the SMI model, these centres will continue with existing research strengths and join new collaborative research synergies drawing together a total annual operating research budget of $18 million and involving almost 200 staff and postgraduates.

The internationally renowned JKMRC has rock-solid links with the Australian and international mining industries in developing and applying new knowledge in mining and mineral processing.

JKMRC Director Professor Tim Napier-Munn, said the centre was built on a collaborative arrangement of forming research teams to solve commercial challenges putting it two decades ahead of its time in what is now the well-recognised, co-operative research centre model.

JKMRC's province is the mine-site and mineral-processing with its flagship joint-venture with industry, the long-running P9 mineral processing project, involving 39 companies in five countries.

Other key initiatives include the "mine-to-mill" project which looks holistically at ways to extract more product from the minerals' chain, the low-cost "caving" method of mining and "FrothCam" technology which assists in maximum ore recovery from mineral flotation plants.

Befitting its international commercial focus, the JKMRC recently incorporated its long-established commercialisation company JKTech which makes research outcomes available to industry in the form of products and services.

Charting some of the fresh territory within SMI is the newly created Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining headed by Dr David Brereton.

Dr Brereton, who came to the University from the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission, has a strong interest in practical social science research that will assist mining companies to improve their social and environmental performance.

"There is a very significant change process under way in the mining and minerals sector, and the SMI concept aims to bring different perspectives to bear on the issues confronting the industry and its public perception," Dr Brereton said.

Developing indicators of the social wellbeing of mining communities, reviewing options for accommodation of a new mine's workforce and the impact of the burgeoning fly-infly-out work culture on families and staff turnover are some new research directions.

Other SMI collaborative research projects explore risk and safety issues including accident reconstruction using virtual reality, technical aspects of mine-site production, and flexible-learning education packages for the mining and minerals' processing area.

Pyrometallurgy power
Through the use of 21st Century science, the ancient art of alchemy has been transformed into the high-temperature processing of materials known as pyrometallurgy.

This process of turning minerals into metals, and the recycling of obsolete and waste materials, is a multi-billion-dollar business at the core of modern industrialised economies.

Its success varies according to the chemical reactions that take place and the resulting outcomes and is dependent on the composition of the ingredients, temperature and gas atmosphere.

Being able to predict whether the reactions will go, under what conditions they will go and how fast they will go, is the core business of UQ's Pyrometallurgy Research Centre known as PYROSEARCH which operates within the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI).

As an international leader in its field, PYROSEARCH recently attracted a $2.5 million, five-year ARC Linkage grant with industry to develop new advanced computer models of high-temperature chemical systems.

Associate Professor Peter Hayes said these models will be used by industry to design and operate more efficient processes, reduce energy consumption and improve the recovery of metals from the original materials.

"Science, industry, the environment and the wider community will all benefit from this sort of collaborative research," Dr Hayes said.

Current PYROSEARCH projects include research on:

• molten oxide systems used in the production of lead and in the recycling
of lead-acid batteries;
• the production and recycling of zinc, which is used in galvanised iron and metal alloys;
• the production of ferro-nickel, ferro-chromium and ferro-manganese for the manufacture of a wide range of carbon and stainless steels; and
• the production of copper metal used in electrical cables and metal alloys.

RESEARCH TEAM
WH Bryan Mining Geology Research Centre;
Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation;
Division of Earth Sciences www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/unit/earthsciences.html;
Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/unit/csrm.html;
Minerals Industry Safety & Health Centre;
Division of Mining & Minerals Process Engineering www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/unit/mmmeng.html; and
Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre

FUNDING
University of Queensland ($400,000)
Queensland Government ($1 million)
External funds to SMI & member centres ($16.4 million)

Email
d.mckee@uq.edu.au
p.hayes@minmet.uq.edu.au
t.napier-munn@uq.edu.au

Web links
www.smi.uq.edu.au
pyrosearch.minmet.uq.edu.au
www.jkmrc.uq.edu.au

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