Australian hydrometallurgy research and development

Australia is a major miner of ore that requires hydrometallurgical processing. According to the 2016 US Geological Survey Minerals Commodities Summaries, the country is 1st for aluminium (bauxite) and lithium, 2nd for gold, zinc and cobalt, 4th for nickel and silver, and 6th for copper mining, not to mention its wealth in coal and iron ore. In this paper, examples of recent Australian hydrometallurgical activities are summarised. Then, selected research projects from the University of Queensland hydrometallurgy research group are profiled. The projects profiled are related to fundamental aspects of processing bauxite with organics and reactive silica as well as the development of a synergistic hydro- and pyrometallurgical process for copper. The process context and motivation for the research is introduced, key results are highlighted with the associated relevant references

Notch sensitivity of short and 2D plain woven glass fibres reinforced with different polymer matrix composites

This research article investigated the notch sensitivity of two different glass fibre architectures, namely short and 2D plain-woven glass fibres reinforced with unsaturated polyester and epoxy matrix composites fabricated by the hand lay-up technique. This was carried out through open hole tension tests at different ratios of the specimen hole diameter to the specimen with three different values (0.1, 0.2, 0.5) compared to the unnotched specimen. The notch sensitivity of these composites was evaluated using the residual tensile strength by the application of Whitney-Nuismer Mathematical Model. The results showed that by using polyester matrix, the notch sensitivity of composites reinforced with plain-woven glass fibre is higher than that of short glass fibre at different D/W ratios. On the other hand, on testing epoxy matrixes, the notch sensitivity of composites reinforced with plain-woven glass fibre is lower than that of short glass fibre at different D/W ratios