The major aim of the P9 Project is to help its sponsors achieve ‘best practice’ in the design and operation of mineral processing plants. This is done principally, though not exclusively, through the development and demonstration of modelling and simulation techniques and measurement tools.

Operating since 1962, the AMIRA P9 project has established itself as the world’s leading, collaborative mineral processing research project. Its achievements have helped re-shape industry understanding of plant design and operation.

Research Scope

The P9N extension will undertake a range of integrated research topics in the two major fields of comminution/classification and flotation. The extension will address a number of key themes, which have been defined by industry after a lengthy consultation process.

Comminution and Classification
The overall objective of comminution and classification research is to minimise the energy used in grinding rocks to the required size distribution and liberation. The research topics in comminution and classification can be divided into three themes:

• Improvement of current technologies
• Reduction of energy for comminution
• Innovation and enabling technologies.

Within these themes, five major areas have been identified – AG and SAG modelling, Classification including cyclones, Fundamental modelling of comminution, HPGR, and Fine comminution machines.

Flotation
The major objective of P9N flotation research is to achieve the optimum separation of particles, on the basis of recovery and/or selectivity, received from the comminution and classification circuit. This allows better resource utilisation through improved value recovery, reduced metal losses to tailings and reduced energy consumption in downstream processes.

Flotation research topics in P9N have been divided into four major headings:

• Floatability component modelling
• Property based modelling
• Cell characterisation
• Integration and optimisation.

The industry sponsorship of the project is further leveraged by an ARC Linkage Grant to the value of $1.74M to cover fundamental research into flotation. It is further leveraged from Government sources in South Africa (THRIP) and Canada (NSERC) which match industry contribution from companies based in their countries.

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