UQ sand mining startup named among top global innovators by WEF

A sustainable mining startup backed by University of Queensland (UQ) researchers has been recognised among a handful of top global innovators by the World Economic Forum. OreSand Inc — led by Professor Daniel Franks of the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) — offers mining companies a research-backed blueprint to reduce waste and produce useful sand by-products at a time when global demand for the material is surging

“The minerals that make up sand are discarded in huge volumes during the mining of metals like copper and iron,” Franks said. “OreSand Inc works with mining companies to reduce their waste by extracting clean sand by-products from the ore.

“We view an ore body like a butcher views a side of meat: for too long the industry has only mined the rib eye fillet, discarding the rest as waste. We think it is time to start making sausages.”

This vision of ‘nose-to-tail mining’ and the deep partnerships already demonstrated by OreSand Inc captured the attention of the World Economic Forum’s Uplink Top Innovators program, where the project has been named as one of eight global winners that will gain access to networks capable of supporting and scaling it up.

Franks said sand is often discarded during extraction and processing of more valuable metals and usually ends up in a slurry of waste materials known as tailings. This is despite many researchers warning of a looming global shortage of sand, which is used in products such as concrete, glass windows, and even microchips.

“The annual global demand for sand and other aggregates is upwards of 50 billion tonnes, but this demand is also wreaking environmental havoc, destroying fragile ecosystems, and ruining rivers and beaches,” he said.

Using approaches devised by Franks and fellow SMI researchers, including Dr Louise Gallagher and Dr Juliana Segura-Salazar at the Global Centre for Mineral Security, OreSand Inc helps mining companies to use existing technologies to modify ore extraction so quality sands can be captured and processed from the ore before they become tailings.

Gallagher said that by focusing on the production of quality sand instead of repurposing tailings, OreSand Inc methods were able to create huge business opportunities and avoid the array of challenges associated with trying to reuse mining waste.

“Tailings are an expensive waste management issue for mining companies, often adding another degree of difficulty to an already complex project,” Gallagher said. “Poorly managed tailings are notorious for triggering some of the world’s most serious environmental disasters.

“The knowledge we are developing at OreSand Inc shows how practices can be tweaked to prevent sand from being a tailings management issue and instead a valuable by-product.”

Each year the World Economic Forum identifies top innovators using its UpLink platform, with the aim of finding and nurturing startups focused on sustainability.

“The hope is that eventually we will see sustainable practices championed by OreSand Inc become mainstream thinking in the mining industry,” Segura-Salazar said. “We want to play a part in the paradigm shift.”

Image: Dr Juliana Segura-Salazar (left) and Dr Lulit Habte Ekubatsion at UQ’s School of Civil Engineering Concrete Laboratory. Image credit: Global Centre for Mineral Security (GCMS).