Just another day for Brisbane's mining pioneers
Media call, noon Sunday at Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, on the steps of the Merivale Street entrance.
Brisbane is hosting the World Mining Congress this week, starting Monday, with 3,000 delegates from 70 countries.
We're offering interviews and a media call at noon today to brief you on the Congress, and Brisbane's ongoing role in creating a safer, more sustainable industry.
- World Mining Congress program manager Prof Mike Hood
- Brisbane's CSIRO researchers who
- Have made deep mining safer with longwall technology
- Are now helping NASA prepare for mining on the Moon
- The sand guru from UQ – sand is the most mined material on Earth
- And Thiess – started as a road building business, now a leader in autonomous mining services
- Plus overlay of autonomous vehicles, NASA's Artemis mission and more
- Plus Centre walk through of exhibition set up with trucks, tech and hi vis.
Tomorrow, Monday 26 June, Brisbane welcomes 3,000 delegate to the 26th World Mining Congress and the first in Australia. The Congress has been ten years in the planning with CSIRO's Hua Guo leading a delegation to Brazil to bid for Brisbane in 2016.
"Here at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, in the heart of beautiful Brisbane, we have gathered the greatest minds in mining around the world, the influential companies, the smartest inventors, the most progressive investors and thousands of passionate delegates," says Dr Guo who is the Congress Chair.
"Together, we are the people who can reimagine mining to resource the world for tomorrow, creating value for society," he says.
"We started organising the Congress on the cusp of COVID, in February 2020," says Congress organiser Emma Bowyer. "It's exciting to be back in action and filling Brisbane's massive Convention Centre."
The big question at the Congress is, "Can mining walk and talk the same time," says Professor Mike Hood, program director for the Congress. "Can we find and sustainably mine the vast amounts of critical minerals needed for decarbonisation. And at the same time, how can we decarbonise the industry itself, and make mining safer."
"Brisbane researchers have many of the answers," he says.
"Sand is the most exploited natural resource on the planet," says UQ's Professor Daniel Franks. It's the critical mineral for city and infrastructure building. for cities. However, its extraction from seas, rivers, beaches and quarries has an impact on the environment and surrounding communities. He's leading a symposium on Monday on how to produce sand and other building materials sustainably, including harvesting it from mining waste.
"Around 90 per cent of Australia's underground coal production comes from longwall mining using massive machines augmented with automation technologies developed by CSIRO in Brisbane," says CSIRO's Dr Jonathon Ralston. "At the Congress we'll present our latest remote innovations utilising 50 individual lidars, multiple cameras, and high-performance inertial sensors on production mining equipment."
He says that this technology combined with modelling, data fusion and visualisation will provide real time, actionable information for underground mining operations, making them safer.
And he'll talk about the other end of the scale – small scale mining on the Moon to support NASA's planned return mission, Artemis. Producing just one kilogram of a resource such as water, oxygen or a building material on the Moon could save hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Mining industry pioneer Thiess will be joining Caterpillar at the Congress for a live demonstration of remote operation of Cat semi-autonomous dozers on an operating mine site, more than 800km away in Central Qld. Trent Smith, Group Manager – Autonomy Services is available at the media call to discuss Thiess' shift to autonomous mining
The five Thiess brothers started as road contractors on the Darling Downs in 1934. They went on to win their first mining contract at Muswellbrook Coal Mine in the Hunter Valley in 1944.
And then the Congress. On the first day we will explore:
- Minerals policy requirements for the next 30 years
- Sand – the most mined material on Earth, critical for all infrastructure, including renewable energy
- Sustainable concrete in an urbanising world
- The art of closure: Mines turning into physics labs, parks, pumped hydro.
- First Nations perspective on mining closures and transitions - voices from Australia, Canada and Mongolia
- Plus state and federal ministers speaking.
