Christian Antonio

General

I am always looking for prospective Ph.D. or MSc students. If you wish to know more about available projects, feel free to send me an email with your CV and a few lines regarding your research background and interests. My fields of interests include:

• High Voltage Pulse Technology
• Pre-concentration Techniques (Grade Engineering, Ore-Sorting, Selective Breakage)
• Microwave Processing
• Tailings Dewatering

High Voltage Pulse Technology for Minerals Processing (Various Projects)

High Voltage Pulse Technology for Improved Minerals Processing

Global demand for minerals and metals, particularly copper and gold, has risen and is forecast to continue rising in the decades to come. Indeed, Batterham (2017) quotes that demand in 2050 will be double that in 2015. The quality of deposits of these materials is decreasing, with them tending to be located at greater depths, be hosted in harder rock matrices, be of lower grade and of a more complex, finer grained and disseminated mineralogy. As such, the costs of processing these deposits, to enable extraction of the valuable metals, have increased and will continue to do so unless novel technologies to reduce costs are developed and deployed.

Comminution is especially challenged in the face of likely future ores. Comminution is the process via which the individual minerals are made separable, typically due to the size reduction achieved. Comminution is currently the most energy intensive process used in minerals operations. This will only increase for harder ores, with more disseminated, finer grained, complex mineralogies which will require finer grinding, and thus more energy input, to enable a subsequent separation to occur. High Voltage Pulse (HVP) technology is a selective comminution process designed to decrease the energy required to liberate valuable materials and enable their separation, such that the contained metals can then be extracted.

HVP comminution applies electrical energy directly to ore fragments to achieve selective breakage of particles containing metalliferous mineral grains. In the past 10 years, the SMI-JKMRC has conducted extensive research using HVP electrical comminution technology for the mineral industry and have become the leaders in this field. Three major applications for the mining industry have been identified and explored by the research team to date:

1. Pre-weakening

2. Pre-concentration

3. Enhanced Liberation

Research to date has shown HVP has significant potential to address many current and future mineral processing challenges. Nonetheless, barriers remain to industrial uptake of the HVP technology. Fundamental knowledge gaps, around ore composition and amenability to HVP, and the optimum means of incorporating this technology and the benefits it provides, into mineral processing circuits exist.

High Voltage Pulse Technology is a large and exciting research initiative at the JKMRC. The student intern will work with researchers and undertake various studies and tasks on HVP, including experimental and analysis of results, in order to obtain a better understanding of the responses of ores with different mineralogy to this novel technology. The intern will gain valuable knowledge about the HVP process as well as learn technical and laboratory skills relevant to the mining industry.

We are currently looking for PhD and MSc students to undertake research on HVP Technology in a number of areas including:

• Investigation of Ore Amenability to HVP Technology
• Integration of HVP into Mining Circuit
• Quantifiying the Benefits of HVP Technology in Mining
• Scale-up of HVP in Mining

If you are interested in HVP or any of the above projects please get in touch. Prospective students may be asked to apply for the Graduate School Scholarship (UQGSS). Please follow link below for guidelines & application deadlines.

https://scholarships.uq.edu.au/scholarship/graduate-school-scholarships-uqgss-%E2%80%93-includes-rtp