The Parker Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) announced the winners of its 2009 Research Collaboration and PhD Project Excellence Awards at its Science Day last week.
The awards went to the ‘Impacts of Mineralogy on Hydrometallurgy’ project team and former student Dr Geoffrey Carter, respectively.
The ‘Impacts of Mineralogy on Hydrometallurgy’ project involves researchers from CSIRO and Curtin University of Technology.
According to the Centre, the project team has been working on processing techniques for nickel laterite and complex sulfide ores.
The research aims to minimise nickel and copper losses during leaching, increase dissolution of nickel and copper from refractory mineral assemblages and develop strategies for iron and acid control in heap leaching, the Centre said.
The award comes with a $5000 prize which will be shared between the team.
Parker CRC chairman Jules Perkins said it was encouraging to see the contributions made by the Curtin Applied Geology and Applied Physics researchers, who did not have a background in hydrometallurgy or mineral processing.
“The project is an outstanding example of what we aim to achieve within the Centre, bringing together teams with a range of skills and scientific backgrounds,” he said.
“We recognise there are scientific capabilities in non-hydrometallurgy research disciplines that could potentially add significant value for our end-users.”
The PhD Project Excellence Award was won by Dr Geoffrey Carter for his thesis, ‘Controlling Precipitation Processes in the Production of Value Added Zirconia,’ submitted last year.
According to the Centre, his research enhanced the performance of an operational plant and produced five refereed journal publications.
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