General Process Metallurgy

The General Process Metallurgy Research Group activities cover studies on microwave treatments in high temperature circumstances and research using side streams from metals production in various applications.
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Research group information

Unit and faculty

Process Metallurgy
Faculty of Technology

Contact information

Research group leader

Research group description

The focus in research and development of metal production processes is now on increasing the sustainability of the processes and improving energy and material efficiency. This means increased need to develop new processes and technologies to characterize, treat and modify and various primary and secondary raw materials for metallurgical use and utilization. Our current research focuses on the use of microwaves energy in refining the physical properties of primary minerals, expedite chemical reactions, and recover valuable metals from secondary resources. In this field, we have extensive expertise with over 100 peer-reviewed publications and several projects in microwave-related research in the last ten years.

Current research mainly focusing on:

  • Understand the interaction mechanism of microwave energy with materials and how such data underpins scale up of microwave processes to the industrial scale
  • Using microwave energy for the recovery and recycling of valuable metals from primary raw materials and secondary metallurgical industries wastes
  • Using microwave energy for catalyze or accelerate the reduction reaction (for instance, Hydrogen reduction).

Research areas

  • High temperature microwave reactors (i.e., Reduction reaction, solid waste treatment)
  • Microwave pyrolysis (i.e., biomass)
  • Permittivity measurements (dielectric properties of materials)
  • Modelling of electromagnetic microwaves
  • High temperature furnaces
  • Modification and utilization of side-streams (slags, dusts)

Research tools

  • Reaction kinetics: thermodynamic-kinetic reaction models, high-temperature experiments (raw material-gas)
  • Reaction equilibria: computational thermodynamics (FactSage, HSC Chemistry), thermogravimetry, COMSOL, QuickWave electromagnetic modelling
  • Permittivity measurements: Resonant cavity perturbation, Microwave Dielectric and Thermal Measurements (MW-DETA), open-ended coaxial probe.
  • Characterization: FE-SEM/EDS, XRF, XRD, OES, DSC-TGA, XPS, FTIR

Projects