PYROSEARCH, the pyrometallurgy research group within the University of Queensland's Mining, Minerals and Materials Engineering Department, has been awarded a $510,000 contract for research into high temperature zinc smelting processes.
Group leader Associate Professor Peter Hayes said the funding included $240,000 from an ARC SPIRT grant and $270,000 from a consortium of industry sponsors coordinated through Imperial Smelting Process Ltd (ISP).
"ISP assists in the operation of the 12 zinc blast furnaces currently in operation around the world which produce about 10 percent of the world's zinc and five percent of the world's lead," Dr Hayes said.
"This particular research project is aimed at helping these companies understand more clearly the complex reactions which are occurring inside the processes so that the operations can be modified and improved.
"An important characteristic of these high temperature operations is their ability to treat a wide range of feedstocks. This includes complex mixtures of naturally-occurring minerals which cannot be economically treated by any other means, and recycled materials and hazardous wastes which would otherwise result in environmental damage.
"The operation of these furnaces will be changing quite dramatically over the next few years with increasing emphasis on the processing of recycled materials. To make these changes we need to understand in detail what is happening inside the reactors."
Dr Hayes said dealing with temperatures of up to 1400 degrees Celsius made it difficult to measure inside the furnaces as most equipment either dissolves or melts.
"Through laboratory techniques involving heating mixtures of synthetic materials in controlled conditions at high temperatures and then rapidly quenching them, we are able to literally freeze the material," he said.
"We can then examine the materials at room temperature - using the University's electron microanalysis probe - at our leisure and obtain very accurate measurements of the phases present at high temperature and their compositions.
"This is something other people have not been able to do in these zinc/lead smelting systems. Dr Eugene Jak and postgraduate research scholar Baojun Zhao have developed these new research techniques which are providing valuable fundamental as well as practical data. The minerals industry is responding positively to these advances with strong financial support."
Dr Hayes said the project had started last year and would continue until 2001.
Sponsors for the project include ISP members Pasminco Metals in Australia, Britannia Zinc and Rio Tinto Research and Technical Development in the UK, Metalleurop in France, Enirisorse in Italy and Hashinohe in Japan.
Zinc is used in galvanizing steel to protect it from corroding or rusting, in zinc die casting and in a wide range of non-ferrous metals alloys.
PYROSEARCH is also completing a three-year research project for the CRC in Black Coal Utilisation on characterisation of coal ash slags, and currently undertaking research on copper, nickel, lead and ferro-manganese smelting processes. The group has attracted over $2 million in external research funding in the past five years.
Dr Hayes said that as a result of a collaborative research program with the Centre for Computational Thermochemistry at the University of Montreal in Canada, University of Queensland Dr Eugene Jak has also developed chemical thermodynamic models of complex oxide systems.
"These models have been incorporated into the FACT computer system and are used by researchers and industry world-wide in the improvement of metallurgical processes and the development of new, cleaner and more efficient production technologies," he said.
For further information contact Dr Peter Hayes (telephone (07) 3365 3511 or email p.hayes@minmet.uq.edu.au).
