Sustainable Metals
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Swinburne Engineer highlights the importance of developing Sustainable Metals
Geoff Brooks recently addressed a joint meeting of Australian/European government officials and academics on the subject of "Sustainable Metals: The Challenge for Europe and Australia". The event which focused on building research links between Australia and Europe, was organised by FEAST (Forum for European-Australian Science and Technology co-operation) and held in Melbourne and Sydney during March.
Geoff's talk (the overheads can be seen here) highlighted how much of the wealth of Australia was connected to our mineral wealth and that developing sustainable routes to metal production was vitally important to our economy but also to the large European metal manufacturing industries. In the talk, specific examples around recycling technology and lowering the energy requirements for Aluminium production were presented. Some delegates were surprised to know that aluminium requires roughly tens times the energy to produce the same quantity of steel, an important fact, when you consider that Australia is the world's number one alumina producer (the raw material for aluminium production) and number five in aluminium production. This shiny light metal is also the number two export earner for Victoria, so developing a sustainable Aluminium industry is important at the local level, as well globally.
The presentation was well received and generated significant interest. It is Prof Brooks' hope that significant collaboration can be generated between groups like the High Temperature Processing