Webinar: Critical Mineral Processing

Join the Social and Environment Society and Metallurgical Society for their Webinar: Critical Mineral Processing.

About this event

This event is part of our four-part webinar series ‘Critical Minerals and Materials: Insights, Innovation and Perspectives’,  showcasing Australia’s leadership across the critical minerals value chain. Each session pairs an expert speaker from the University of Sydney together with an industry practitioner, offering complementary perspectives that bridge academic research, engineering practice, and industry application.

Processing, the third event in the series zeroes in on mineral processing, the crucial stage that transforms raw ores into the high-purity materials needed for clean energy technologies. Effective processing is key to Australia’s vision of capturing more value onshore: the national strategy aims to “increase [Australia’s] footprint in downstream processing and become a global recycling hub” for critical minerals. However, refining battery metals and rare earths can be technically challenging and energy-intensive, requiring innovation to improve efficiency and cut emissions.

Professor Itai Einav (University of Sydney), a world leader in geomechanics and mineral processing research will deliver the first part of this session. Prof. Einav directs the Sydney Centre in Geomechanics and Mining Materials, where his team develops novel methods to handle bulk and granular materials in mining, work which is expected to boost yields and reduce processing costs. In this talk, Prof. Einav will explore how cutting-edge process innovations,  from advanced grinding techniques to reactive extraction technologies and how it can overcome current bottlenecks in critical mineral supply. By improving efficiency and sustainability in refining, these innovations will help shrink the carbon footprint of critical materials production while enabling Australia to tap more economic value from its resource endowment.

Our second speaker, Stuart Nicol, is Senior Metallurgist (Pyrometallurgy) at Glencore Technology. He will present on global metal flows and how important recycling of critical minerals is to the energy transition. Resource rich nations, like Australia, are able to source critical metal containing materials from geological sources. Other nations are less fortunate and must source it in other ways. This is generally by importing critical material intermediates or recycling from post-consumer materials. Due to the ability to eventually become self-sustaining with effective recycling, advanced countries are rapidly expanding their ability to recycle critical materials. This is shifting the global flows of post-consumer materials from being exported to developing nations to in-country metallurgical assets. This webinar will explore the movement of post-consumer materials, the challenges associated with these materials and the advances in extractive metallurgy allowing this.

Join us to find out more!

Speaker/s

Professor Itai Einav

Professor

Read more Hide

After completing his PhD at the Technion of Israel in 2002, Itai Einav moved to the University of Western Australia for his postdoc. In 2005, he joined the University of Sydney as a Senior Lecturer and was promoted to Full Professor in 2012. During his Time at Sydney, he also served as the Director of the Sydney Centre in Geomechanics and Mining Materials (SciGEM). His research is guided by a passion for bridging physics and engineering. This interdisciplinary focus has enabled him to make significant contributions across both domains while developing a versatile toolkit of theoretical, computational, and experimental methods. Building on this foundation, Itai has advanced research in areas such as geomechanics, granular physics, geophysics, solid and fluid mechanics, and minerals processing, as well as in interdisciplinary collaborations at the interface with the arts. Most recently, his work in minerals processing has introduced novel computational and experimental technologies, which has led to fruitful collaboration with major companies in the sector, tackling diverse problems such as energy-efficient comminution, as well as controlling product homogeniety during bulk handling and precipitation.

Stuart Nicol

MAusIMM

Read more Hide

Stuart Nicol (RPEQ) has a BE and PhD in chemical and metallurgical engineering from the University of Queensland.

He obtained his PhD from the University of Queensland in 2019. He is experienced in the research, design and operation of metallurgical processes as well as knowledgeable in most commodities and processes. He has extensive experience in downstream processing, including recycling of critical minerals.

Stuart enjoys technical challenges, specifically in process chemistry, and is also Chair of the AusIMM Metallurgical Society.