OBJECTIVES

The hydrometallurgical industry is increasingly using process models to capture the existing knowledge base, identify areas where knowledge is lacking and understand the impact of circuit changes to guide process improvements and/or pilot work in a new process. Flowsheeting computer tools can be used to understand the impact of a change to one unit operation in a complex processing circuit on that individual unit, and also the upstream and downstream implications of the change.

Industry would also benefit from a sophisticated multi-option process model that could take interrelated variables such as metal recovery, processing costs, capital costs and environmental impact into account to determine the optimum circuit configuration for processing a new ore.

In addition, flowsheeting is a valuable tool to examine water management. Modelling the water balance in operating circuits and identifying water bottlenecks could offer options for minimising water use and increasing process efficiency.

This project is initially focusing on gold processing circuits but may expand to base metals. It aims to:

• build thermodynamic and kinetic (rate) reaction models for solution chemistry, leaching and adsorption
  
• develop complex flowsheets incorporating multiple processing options, and an optimisation framework, to determine the optimum economic and environmental circuit design/operation
  
• identify options to improve water management with the overall goal of reducing water consumption.

INDUSTRY BENEFITS

• improved processing and utilisation of resources (eg water), achieved by flowsheet modelling.

RESEARCH TEAM
Dr Matthew Jeffrey (Project Leader)
A/Prof Parisa Arabzadeh-Bahri
Dr Vishnu Pareek
Dr Ricardo Pascual
Ms Heather Evans (PhD student)
Mr Abbas Razavimanesh (PhD student)

RESEARCH COLLABORATION
CSIRO Minerals
Curtin University
Murdoch University

PROJECT DURATION
2005-2008