Industry: Collaborations
Examples of recent consulting and collaborative research projects with industry include:
Minerals
- AMIRA
- BHP Billiton
- Alcoa
Water Utilities
Pharmaceutical
- Glaxosmithkline
Chemical
- Dulux
- Orica Explosives
Food
- Burra Foods Australia
- Nestle
- Unilever
United Utilities & Yorkshire Water, UK
This aim of this project is to understand the dewatering properties of water and waste water sludges. The project is sponsored by United Utilities (UU) and Yorkshire Water (YW), two major utility companies in the United Kingdom. The initial aims of the work (almost ten years ago) were to provide a fundamental understanding of the differences between various sludges in the water and waste water industries. It has now moved on to the utilisation of this knowledge, along with models of filtration and thickening, to optimise the operation of a range of dewatering devices at a range of sites. An additional outcome has been to provide strategic direction as to dewatering practice in the two companies. Elements of the work have also been distilled into the minerals and now the dairy industry.
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AMIRA
The minerals industry, through a variety of sources, continues to be a key collaborative focus for the PFPC. A key route to collaborative work is AMIRA, the Australian Minerals Industry Research Association. One of our major projects in solid-liquid separation has been sponsored through AMIRA project P266D. PFPC researchers led by Professor Peter Scales are collaborating with CSIRO Minerals in Perth (Dr John Farrow and Dr Phil Fawell) and Melbourne (Kosta Simic), CSIRO Manufacturing and Infrastructure Technology in Melbourne (Dr Murray Rudman) and more than twenty minerals and minerals industry service companies. The collaborative work continues to develop and a major new project is due to start in mid-2005. A key focus of the work is understanding the relationship between flocculant structure and function and dewatering in a thickener.
Burra Foods Australia
PFPC researchers are collaborating with Burra Foods Australia, a dairy company based in Korumburra , Victoria to develop production processes for concentrated fresh milk ingredients for the international market. Within this project, the team is assessing and optimising a number of dairy membrane processes. Research is focussed on microfiltration of skim milk to produce a casein concentrate and ultrafiltration to concentrate whey solids. Postgraduate student Gwynneth Rice is studying fouling effects in nanofiltration. This system is used for the separation of dairy lactose and valuable calcium salts, from the less valuable sodium and potassium salts. The project is coordinated by Dr Sandra Kentish and also involves PFPC members Professor Geoff Stevens and Dr Andrea O’Connor. This research is supported by an ARC Linkage grant.