CSIRO spurs sustainable mining efforts

A $7 million state of the art drill research facility in Perth and a partnership with CRC ORE have been unveiled by Australia’s national science agency in a nod of support for mining research.

CSIRO’s Geoscience Drill Core Research Laboratory at the Advanced Resources Research, announced today, is set to be the only facility of its kind in Australia.

The agency says the Perth lab’s advanced mining, equipment and technology services in addition to its existing facilities will allow research and industry to study drill samples at multiple scales.

CSIRO’s acting director of mineral resources Rob Hough said the facility would help discover quality resources needed for Australia to support a global energy transition.   

“Exploration and mining companies commit large investment in drill core operations to be able to peer beneath the surface to understand ore bodies and uncover new underground resources,” Dr Hough said.

“This unique facility is able to maximise data from drill core samples, enabling characterisation across scales; from big picture analyses on kilometres of drill core through to the elemental composition of rock on a microscale.”

The facility has been funded by CSIRO and the Science and Industry Endowment Fund, with co-investment from the University of Western Australia and Curtin University.

It comes in tandem with a planned research partnership between CSIRO and CRC ORE, revealed yesterday, seeking to reduce the physical footprint of mining operations.

The Future Research Program is set to expand on CRC ORE’s research into ore preconcentration technologies that can be used within a mine before materials go to processing plants.

According to the partnership, the new research will look to investigate ways to apply these principles further down the mining value chain, targeting smaller particle sizes and a wider range of ore types.

CRC ORE’s former general manager of research and innovation Paul Revell said approximately three per cent of global direct energy consumption is used in the mining industry just in crushing rock.

On this basis, the partnership believes research into this preconcentration technology could be applied more broadly across the resource base to minimise global environmental and economic impact.

“The opportunity is to develop more energy efficient crushing and grinding processes that are integrated with a preconcentration capability, to remove as much barren material from the ore as possible prior to subjecting the remaining ore to energy and water intensive fine grinding and concentration processes,” Mr Revell explained.

The programme will start as small scale and run for an initial three years.