An international research team from universities in Australia and Canada is heading to the Alaskan wilderness to investigate and enhance the practical use of ‘froth and bubbles’ at a remote mine site.
The research campaign, sponsored by the world’s biggest zinc producer Teck Cominco, is serious business aimed at making money and advancing science.
The focus is on froth flotation, a process used to separate valuable mineral from the unwanted gangue waste material after mining.
Campaign team members Marco Vera and Kym Runge of The University of Queensland’s Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre said a lot of effort had gone into the research program being undertaken in Alaska.
The campaign is part of the international JKMRC-AMIRA P9 project – the world’s longest running mineral processing research project – and the more recent P541A project involving the Ian Wark Research Institute at the University of South Australia and the JKMRC.
The team will conduct their research from June to August 2002 at Teck Cominco’s Red Dog mine, located inside the Arctic circle in northern Alaska.
Mr Vera said the team of ten researchers from three universities, including McGill University’s mineral processing group from Montreal, would take more than a thousand samples of lead-zinc product during the research period.
He said the campaign demonstrated university collaboration working effectively in an industrial setting aimed at achieving the concomitant benefits of adding value to a mining operation – in this case the Red Dog mine – as well as developing the skills and knowledge of postgraduate researchers.
“Essentially the three institutions coming together are bringing with them their own areas of specialisation dealing with one key aspect of mineral processing – that being the froth flotation process.”
Teck Cominco Research Senior Research Engineer Dr Barun Gorain said his company planned to use the knowledge from the joint AMIRA P9 and P541 campaign to develop a comprehensive model for its new Red Dog VIP flotation circuit.
Media: for more information contact David Goeldner, Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (Phone 61-7-33655848, Email: d.goeldner@mailbox.uq.edu.au)
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