Case Study
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Creating truly circular economies is hard, but every single effort made to prevent and minimise waste creates new possibilities for a more sustainable economy.
Sand is one of the most heavily mined commodities in the world and is essential to modern life, from construction and manufacturing to consumer products.
Sand, gravel and crushed stone (known as aggregates) extraction can cause significant damage to ecosystems. At the same time, staggering amounts of waste from mining, such as tailings, are produced.
What if we could tackle sand sustainability and mining waste problems with the same solution?
Supported by an Australia’s Economic Accelerator (AEA) Seed grant, Dr Juliana Segura-Salazar and her colleagues are working to create a sustainable alternative to sand extraction by transforming a mining byproduct into a valuable resource.
Dr Segura-Salazar and the team at the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) and the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland aim to test and validate a new kind of sand, Ore-sand, sourced from the mining and processing of ores.
“Ore-sand has the potential to minimise the environmental and social impacts of both mining and sand extraction in a cost-beneficial solution,” said Dr Segura-Salazar.
“But to be successful and scalable in the long term, we will need to demonstrate the durability and longevity of Ore-sand as part of building materials like concrete and shotcrete.”
The project is working closely with industry partner Newmont Corporation at the Cadia operation in New South Wales who have supplied hundreds of kilograms of sandy feedstock for functional testing.
To date, the characterisation of Newmont samples is showing promising results. The next step in this ‘proof-of-concept’ process is to develop a prototype Ore-sand and production process.
The Ore-sand will be put through its paces with another industry partner, engineering and design firm Aurecon, against the strict specifications mandated for infrastructure projects in Australia.
Project Lead Entrepreneur Dr Segura-Salazar is supported by a remarkable cross-disciplinary team of experts at The University of Queensland, including Professor Daniel Franks, Professor Rebecca Gravina, Associate Professor Vinh Dao, Dr Mehdi Serati, Dr Christian Antonio, and Dr Lulit Habte Ekubatsion.
Professor Rebecca Gravina, renowned expert in Concrete Structures from the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland and a key research collaborator on this project, said that the project owes its success to the outstanding collaboration, expertise, and the sharing of knowledge and resources by all team members.
"The expected outcomes of the project have also a great potential to reduce the carbon footprint of the construction and excavation industries by cutting the consumption of natural and quarried sand in shotcrete operations,” said Dr Serati.
The Ore-sand project is just one of nearly a hundred projects funded through the pilot program, AEA Seed.
AEA is a $1.6 billion Australian Government investment aimed at transforming Australia’s research translation and commercialisation landscape. Follow the AEA LinkedIn page for regular updates.