David Giles, the highest scientific officer of Minex CRC, details some of the major innovations that help accelerate Australian mining.
Mining is a major contributor to the Australian economy and is equivalent to about 75 % of national exports. Since nearly 80 % of the national mineral sediments are still undeveloped, research, development, and innovation in mining technology and technology are very important for the industry to prosper for a long time.
Minex CRC is the world’s largest mineral exploration collaboration in summary of industry, government and research institutions. To support the development of Australian mining sectors, Minex CRC is focusing on promoting mineral innovation and new mineral exploration technology on the market.
Innovation platforms talked to David Giles, the highest scientific officer of Minex CRC, to learn more about collaboration.
How does mining technology innovation use it to accelerate Australian mining? Can you provide some important examples?
Innovation is promoting Australian mining sector in many ways.
Mining is often regarded from the outside to be the “old world”, not particularly innovative. This is not true. The history of mining is one of the constant innovations, promoting productivity and continuing to provide safer and more environmentally responsible technologies and practices.
The productivity promoted by the entire resource value chain is one of the main reasons for mining copper with average head grade approaching 0.5 % (about half of the values just 25 years ago). There have been some recent known examples, such as automation of mining transport infrastructure, digitization of mining sites, and incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) technology for analysis of mining and exploration data.
There are also not well -known profits that are fully performed. One of my favorite examples is the golden Kimiko assay technology provided by Chrysos Corporation. This technique occupies the important part of the mining game, determining the slope of the ore, reducing the danger more, faster and faster. This method was supported by basic research in CSIRO, and then turned into innovation by recognizing a place that could have a major impact on mining workflow.
How does Mining Technology support the standards of Australian mining and compliance with high environment, society, and governance (ESG)?
Of course, in addition to cost efficiency and productivity, most resource sector innovation is needed to provide a wide range of ESG gains.
The main field of focus is to maximize the contribution of the mining industry to the transition to green energy. These contributions may be made in several different ways. Reducing the energy costs of the main mining process (for example, crushing rocks and releasing mining mining requires a huge amount of energy, so even small profits can be greatly reduced in this area. ) Replace fossil fuel energy sources of mine and exploration sites with green energy sources. It also provides mineral products that are essential for green energy transitions to the world (for example, copper for electric wires; lithium, cobalt, battery graphite, and magnet elementary elements).
Minex CRC hopes to make its own contribution with this spectrum. Tube (CT) excavation technology with coil is a good example. The CT platform, which has been bench -marked with the conventional excavation technology in the field trial, is a four -quarter of the size of the conventional site, using 1/5 and 1/7 of the fuel, 50. A percentage of high -speed excavation has been realized.
How did the last 12 months of Minex CRC look like? Can you identify some important highlights?
The technology developed by Minex CRC is mature and is ready for the market. However, they are in a slightly different location on the road, and the best approach will be different for each technology.
In the past 12 months, it was to grasp the transition from great ideas for products or services that can provide value to clients, from those that have been fully tested in the labs and controlled field environments (current operations). ) Burt profits to service providers. This is also the focus of the last three years of the research project, which is currently starting and ending at the end of 2027. That is a big job.
The recent highlights are licensed by DIG CT and include a CT drilling platform with a depth reach of 500m depth that appears in the market excavation meter and distributes samples for clients. Logar, an extended reality drill coalgoing system, is hoped that it is licensed by CSIRO and will be built into a public package in the near future.
What are your short -term goals in the future?
I’m looking for a way to bring technology closer to the market. In most cases, this is a potential use case and a potential user, and in cooperation with a real life field trial that tests technology from a functional point of view, it runs a task and runs the field. Will you survive under conditions? ) And an operation perspective (how or how can the minimum destruction be effectively incorporated into the workflow?). With this type of technology, it turned out that a successful demonstration in a specific scenario of a potential user is very important. We intend to make a lot of effort.
What do you think your Australian mining sector can accelerate to the level you need to meet the domestic and international demand of important and strategic raw materials?
That’s a difficult task. I think we have many works.
There is no doubt that we have resources. The history of 4 billion years of the earth was kind to us. We have a stable government and good bureaucracy, geological surveys, high standards from safety and environmental management, and a remarkable provision of exploration data through efficient mines. However, there are several areas where you need to pay specific precautions.
One is mineral treatment and beneficiary technology aimed at changing a thread -shaped resource (including a huge amount of waste from historical mines, including valuable products such as rare earth elements and cobalt) into reserves. The other is developing a downstream industry to change these raw materials into high -value products such as batteries, magnets, and semiconductors.
The other is to discover and develop new mineral resources that provide a large amount of important minerals at relatively low cost (and low environments). The best new sediment is high quality (reverses the tendency to the low grade above), easy to mining and efficient. Of course, these deposits cannot be ordered from the shelf. We must explore for them. You need to open a new search and develop a tool that works effectively in the search. So minex CRC comes out.
This article is also published in the 21st edition of Quarterly Publication.
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