Welcome to the June09 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
The staff at HQ have been busy. On 26 May at the recent CRC Association conference in Canberra, the Minister for Innovation announced that a new 12th CRC Selection Round was open and would close on 14 August 2009. Our Governing Board met on 11 June in Brisbane and are in strong support of us submitting a bid in this new round.
Feedback from the CRC Committee on the 11th CRC Selection Round was provided to CSRP on 28 June. I have since circulated this to the Technical Advisory Panel Working Group and Governing Board. In general, the feedback was somewhat under-whelming but acknowledged the proposed work on by-products as "new" – so we are on the right track with our focus on value from waste in our new bid.
With only weeks up our sleeve, the Executive have already met several times to determine the details for our new bid and to move things forward as quickly as possible. A draft discussion paper has been prepared and circulated to prospective participants in the new bid and will be updated according to the feedback and comments received.
The proposed CRC has the working title of the CRC for By-product Utilisation (CBU) – Value from waste .
The overall objective of the CBU is straight forward: To re-direct large volumes of currently wasted resources from the minerals and energy sectors to beneficial uses in the construction, agricultural and environmental sectors thus maximising the value to the community, business and the environment.
The ultimate deliverable from the proposed five year program will be significant commercial demonstrations of value derived from by-product reuse, leading to the "normalising" of the use of what were previously considered waste materials.
During June I met with various organisations to discuss current and future initiatives in CSRP including BHP Billiton, Orica, Geopolymer Alliance, Alcoa, Department of Agriculture & Food WA, Curtin University, Sustainable Minerals Institute (University of Queensland) and CSIRO Materials Science & Engineering.
> Please feel free to contact me either by telephone 08 6436 8734 or email stevan.green@csrp.com.au
We still have some 20 or so active research projects, which are now in preparation for the wind-up of CSRP by June 2010.
Proposals have been prepared for performing live SUStainable OPerations case studies with two mineral processing operations which aim to further develop the SUSOP® training manuals. A workshop for the Sustainable Development Program is planned for August. Reports are being written for two projects on scoping studies on an "Evaporative Water Supply/Treatment System" and "Potential Effluent Synergies" in the Kwinana Industrial Area.
The Positron Emission Particle Tracking (PEPT) facility in South Africa is due to be opened in August. An undergraduate student at the University of Erlangen in Germany has been funded by CSRP and a researcher has been brought in to help with the breakage characterisation work at the JKMRC. Requests to publish another 4-5 papers are being prepared and submitted.
After six months of waiting for a suitable production period at OneSteel's Sydney Steel Mill, a very successful steel recarburisation trial was conducted in early June. The trial demonstrated the performance of bio-char as compared with conventional materials used by industry.
Several companies have agreed to join the newly established Geopolymer Alliance, and we will report on the start-up of this in the next newsletter.
Information on the Geopolymer Alliance will be on display at the SDIMI 2009 conference on the Gold Coast next week (6-8 July).
> 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.
The Positron Emission Particle Tracking (PEPT) facility in Cape Town , South Africa is due to be officially opened on 4 August 2009.
PEPT allows the characterisation and visualisation of particulate flow within aggressive industrial environments, such as tumbling mills, flotation cells and powder mixers. The technique is based on the tracking, within the field of view of a modified PET camera, of a single tracer particle which has been labelled with a radionuclide that decays via beta-plus decay.
The new laboratory is situated at iThemba LABS (national cyclotron centre) and funding was provided by the National Research Foundation, the Centre for Minerals Research (UCT), the Metals to Minerals Initiative (UCT), Imperial College London, the University of Cape Town Equipment Committee , and the Centre for Sustainable Resource Processing. In addition, Anglo Platinum and Xstrata are funding the University of Cape Town-lead PEPT research.
The official opening will be attended by many academics, technical staff and students from the University of Cape Town and iThemba LABS, and representatives from more than 20 other universities, funding agencies, and mining companies, both local and international.
The Autumn edition of our external newsletter The Extract has been printed and posted to 500 of our staff, participants and industry contacts.
> Download an electronic version from our website (.pdf 235 kb)
CSRP has organised a "Writing Clear Science" workshop to be offered 8-10 July in Perth. The three-day course will be run by Dr Marina Hurley, herself a scientist who has worked with helping students and professionals hone their writing skills throughout Australia. This is the second year the Education Program has sponsored a writing workshop for our students with last year's course having been offered in Brisbane. The Perth-based course will also include several Parker CRC for Integrated Hydrometallurgy Solutions students.
> Visit the Professional Development section of our website for information on future events
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 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
Publications
Media