The University of Queensland’s (UQ) spin-out venture OreSand has been recognised by the World Economic Forum in hopes of preventing the looming global shortage of sand with sustainable practices.
By focusing on the production quality of sand, this venture has received support from Australian Government initiatives, the Economic Accelerator, and the Resources Technology and Critical Minerals Trailblazer, to offer mining companies a blueprint to reduce waste and meet the growing demand.
Professor Daniel Franks of UQ’s Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) says that during the extraction and processing of more valuable materials, sand is often discarded to end up in tailings.
“We view an orebody 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, and we think it is time to start making sausages,” Franks says.
“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.”
Researchers from the Global Centre for Mineral Security have contributed to the approaches devised by the SMI team, including Dr Louise Gallagher and Dr Juliana Segura-Salazar.
Gallagher says that venture has been able to avoid the array of challenges associated with reusing mining waste, by focusing on the production of quality sand, opening the venture to new business opportunities.
“The knowledge we are developing at OreSand shows how practices can be tweaked to prevent sand from being a tailings management issue and instead a valuable byproduct,” Gallagher says.
Segura-Salazar says the venture hopes to see these sustainable practices implemented across the mining industry.
“We want to play a part in the paradigm shift,” Segura-Salazar says.
Using its UpLink platform, the World Economic Forum identifies top innovators to find and nurture startups that focus on sustainability.
Sand is the most-consumed natural resource on the planet after freshwater with some 50 billion tonnes of sand and gravel used each year. Sand is the foundation of human construction and is used in everything from concrete, to asphalt, fertiliser fillers, glass, road construction, and other building materials.
A 2022 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report found that sand extraction is rising at an “unsustainable” rate of 6% annually. The report builds on from 2019 research that found increasing demand for sand – which had a three-fold increase over 20 years – had caused river pollution, flooding, as well as shrinking aquifers.
Write to Maddison Elliott at Mining.com.au
Images: OreSand
