The behaviour of minor elements plays a key role in the overall economic and environmental performances of processes used for the extraction and refining of minerals to metal products.

The current knowledge and understanding of the deportment of minor elements between phases during mineral processing and downstream processing of concentrates is limited and insufficient to allow development of practices for optimum recovery of valuable components and safe disposal of toxic elements.

The Control of Minor Elements Project brings together world-class expertise in mineral processing, hydro and pyrometallurgy to address growing industry interest in better control and management of toxic and hazardous elements dispersion.

The project aims at quantifying the deportment of various minor elements across mineral processing and metal production value chains, so as to develop optimum flow sheets and practices for treating mined minerals to final metal products.

The other key activity is the development of predictive models for assessing the leaching behaviour of mineral phases/waste products under natural environments so that the stability of toxic and hazardous elements in tailings and slags could be assessed. Use will be made of mathematical models to guide the experimental work and to develop flow sheets linking various unit processes.

The initial focus of the project will be on the Australian processing of copper or nickel sulphide ores. Extension of this work to encompass processing of lead-zinc ores could be carried out as part of the second phase of this project.

Contact Information
Isles Road, Indooroopilly, Qld Australia 4068
Phone:+61 7 3365 5888
Fax:    +61 7 3365 5999
Email: jkmrc@uq.edu.au