The launch of the new Anglo American Centre for Sustainable Comminution at The University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane, Australia, is set to make a real difference in developing and maintaining sustainable competence in comminution, while simultaneously furthering collaboration in this field globally.
Comminution is a process in which solid materials are reduced in size through crushing, grinding and other processes. This process is an important operation in mineral processing and other fields.
However, comminution is an energy intensive process and consumes up to 60 per cent of a mine’s power supply and up to 11 per cent of the world’s energy. Improved technologies in this area will increase the amount of energy available for other uses across the globe.
The Centre, launched today at UQ’s Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC), will positively affect the transfer of knowledge and technology to operations and projects in the design, commissioning and optimisation of production.
Conducting core research projects that investigate novel ways of liberation in order to meet the requirements of future mining technologies will be a focus of the Centre, for which Anglo American has committed $AU10 million over five years.
Anglo American is funding five centres of excellence as a Global Comminution Collaborative (GCC) to be managed and run from JKMRC.
These centres are located at the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) at The University of Queensland (UQ), at University of Cape Town in South Africa, at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, at Hacettepe University in Turkey, and at the Laboratory of Mineral Technology (LTM) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
They are the only academic centres of excellence in comminution that currently exist globally, with each possessing its own particular area of expertise. The core research projects, which will focus on issues common to the industry, are structured to be spread across the five centres of excellence of the GCC, appropriate to their specific expertise.
“Comminution is integral to mineral processing, however the number of senior researchers in this area is deminishing,” said Centre Director Professor Malcolm Powell.
“In addition to providing solutions for the challenges facing the industry today, the Anglo American Centre for Sustainable Comminution will have an important role in educating the next generation of researchers in this area.”
A unique aspect of the collaboration is that the students at each of the universities will be co-supervised by two to three supervisors from the different universities, while the post graduate degrees will be joint degrees. Typically, a university would only provide a single supervisor, while there would be no possibility of a joint degree.
Anglo American Head of Geosciences, Process and Sustainable Development: Technology Development, Jeremy Mann, concludes that the centre will help fill a shortfall in communition knowledge.
”’We are in a vulnerable situation, as there is a lack of sustainable expertise to conduct the design and operational reviews required in one of the key, most capital intensive, processing areas of mining operations.
“The establishment of the Centre and the collaboration that drives it will therefore definitively bolster the development in comminution and benefit both industry and academia, by advancing research in key areas, while developing a pipeline of expertise and talent. Resultantly, this will be of great benefit to the mining industry globally.”
ENDS
For further information, please contact:
Hulisani Rasivhaga, Media Relations
Tel: +27 (0)11 638 4401
Anna Bednarek
Tel: +61 (0)7 3346 4240
Email: [email protected]