Industry interaction  

INDUSTRY INTERACTION AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER ACTIVITIES

CCFS has a strategic goal to interact closely with the mineral exploration industry at both the research and the teaching/training levels. The research results of the Centre’s work are transferred to industry and to the scientific community in several ways:

• collaborative industry-supported Honours, MSc and PhD projects

• short courses relevant to industry and government-sector users, designed to communicate and transfer new technologies, techniques and knowledge in the discipline areas relevant to CCFS

• one-on-one research collaborations and shorter-term collaborative research on industry problems involving national and international partners

• provision of high-quality geochemical analyses with value-added interpretations on a collaborative research basis with industry and government organisations, extending our industry interface

• use of consultancies and collaborative industry projects (through the commercial arms of the national universities) which employ and disseminate the technological and conceptual developments carried out by the Centre

• GLITTER, an on-line data-reduction program for Laser Ablation ICPMS analysis, developed by GEMOC and CSIRO/GEMOC participants, has been successfully commercialised and continues to be available from GEMOC through Access MQ (http://www.gemoc.mq.edu.au/); the software is continually upgraded.

• collaborative relationships with technology manufacturers (more detail in the section on Infrastructure and technology development)

The Centre for Exploration Targeting (CET) at UWA (http://www.cet.edu.au/industry-linkage) provides CCFS with a unique interface with a broad spectrum of mineral exploration companies and many CET activities (e.g. research projects, workshops and postgraduate short courses). 

CCFS suports the national UNCOVER initiative

SUPPORT SOURCES

CCFS industry support includes:

• direct funding of research programs 
• industry subscriptions (CET)
• “in kind” funding including field support (Australia and overseas), access to proprietary databases, sample collections, digital datasets and support for GIS platforms 
• logistical support for fieldwork for postgraduate projects
• collaborative research programs through ARC Linkage Projects and the University External Collaborative Grants (e.g. Macquarie’s Enterprise Grant Scheme) and PhD program support
• assistance in the implementation of GIS technology in postgraduate programs 
• participation of industry colleagues as guest lecturers in undergraduate units 
• extended visits by industry personnel for interaction and research
• ongoing informal provision of advice and formal input as members of the Advisory Board
   

ACTIVITIES IN 2016

• TerraneChron® studies have enjoyed continued uptake by a significantsegment of the global mineral exploration industry. This methodology, currently unique to CCFS/GEMOC, requires the integration of data from threeinstruments (electron microprobe, LAM-ICPMS and LAM-MC-ICPMS) and delivers fast, cost-effective information on the tectonic history of regional terranes(http://www.gemoc.mq.edu.au/TerraneChron.html). The unique extensive database (over 31,600 zircon U-Pb and Hf-isotope analyses) in the Macquarie laboratoryallows unparalleled contextual information in the interpretations and reports provided to industry.

• The Distal Footprints of Giant Ore Systems: UNCOVER Australia, (supported by CSIRO ex Science & Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF), MERIWA and industrycollaborators) continued. The project aims to develop a toolkit with a workflow to identify the distal footprints of the Giant Ore Systems in order toovercome the fundamental limitation in current exploration methodologies; Australia’s thick cover of weathered rock and sediment.

At the Dead Sea: Bill Griffin, Sue O’Reilly, John Ward and Vered Toledo (COO, Shefa Yamim).

• The CCFS collaboration with Shefa Yamim Ltd. (Akko, Israel) continued and expanded in 2016. Bill Griffin and Sue O’Reilly visited Israel in January to give talks at the annual congress of the Israel Geological Society in Eilat. Bill gave the Plenary address entitled “Deep-Earth methane, mantle dynamics and mineral exploration: insights from N. Israel, S. Tibet and Kamchatka” and a session talk “Heaven on Earth: tistarite (Ti2O3) and other ‘nebular’ phases in corundum aggregates from Mt Carmel volcanic rocks”. Sue gave a session talk on “The role of the deep lithosphere in metallogeny”. There was also a very active and vibrant poster session. Following the meeting they returned to the Mt Carmel area to examine and sample several localities of the Cretaceous volcanic rocks, and to visit the alluvial exploration sites under the guidance of Dr John Ward, an expert on alluvial mining. Laboratory work on the remarkable super-reduced mineral associations continued, including collaboration with Prof Martin Saunders in the TEM lab at CMCA in Perth.

• The ARC Linkage Project titled “Global Lithosphere Architecture Mapping” (GLAM) was extended as the “LAMP” (Lithosphere Architecture Mapping in Phanerozoic orogens) project through a Macquarie University Enterprise Grant with Minerals Targeting International as the external industry partner. A sub-licensing agreement with Minerals Targeting International accommodates Dr Graham Begg’s role and access to GLAM IP (in relationship to Macquarie, BHP Billiton and the GLAM project) as Director of this company. Dr Begg spent significant research time at GEMOC through 2016 as part of the close collaborative working pattern for this project.

• A new Linkage Project “Ore deposits and tectonic evolution of the Lachlan Orogen, SE Australia” commenced between CCFS Associate Investigator Elena Belousova, the University of Tasmania, ANU, the Geological Survey of NSW, Geoscience Australia, Rio Tinto Limited, Alkane Resources Ltd, Sandfire Resources Nl, IMEX Consulting, Evolution Mining Limited, Heron Resources Limited and the Department of State Growth. The project aims to look at ore deposits and the tectonic evolution of the Lachlan Orogen in SE Australia. The outcomes of this project will be used to identify areas of high potential for economically valuable ore deposits, enabling more efficient prioritisation of mineral exploration efforts in South-Eastern Australia.

• A collaborative project funded by Rio Tinto Limited commenced in 2014. Marco Fiorentini and Yongjun Lu (UWA) are investigating “The mineral chemistry of zircon as a pathfinder for magmatic-hydrothermal copper and gold systems”. The project aligns with the goals of Flagship Program 2, Genesis, transfer and focus of fluids and metals.

• The GEMOC technique for dating the intrusion of kimberlites and lamproites using LAM-ICPMS U-Pb analysis of groundmass perovskite continued. This rapid, low-cost application has proven very attractive to the diamond exploration industry, and has led to several collaborative projects. It played a significant role in Montgarri Castillo- Oliver’s PhD study of Angolan kimberlites, carried out in collaboration with the mineral exploration industry in Angola.

• A collaborative research project continued in 2016 with the GSWA as a formal CCFS Flagship Program, in which GEMOC is carrying out in situ Hf-isotope analyses of previously SHRIMP- dated zircon grains from across the state. This is a part of the WA Government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme.

• Following Professor Bill Griffin’s Noumea workshop on new approaches to exploration and minor-element exploitation in ophiolitic complexes, a collaborative project was established with Jervois Mining, involving a co-tutelle PhD student (Mathieu Chasse) jointly supervised by Professor George Callas, Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris, France. This project continued in 2016. It has led to significant advances in understanding the speciation and mineral residence of the element Scandium (Sc) in lateritic weathering profiles developed on mafic and ultramafic rocks. It also has helped to characterise and define a world-class Sc resource in western New South Wales, and to provide indicators for further exploration.

• CET held their annual “Corporate Members Day” on the 7^th of December 2016, to showcase its research to its Corporate Members. The day provided an audience of over 70 representatives from CET Member companies with the opportunity to discuss the innovative work of the CET, including its involvement in CCFS, and gave CCFS ECR and postgraduate students a chance to interact with industry. Posters and poster presentations by CET staff and students showcased the width and breadth of research activities.

• Industry visitors spent varying periods at Macquarie, Curtin and UWA (CET) in 2016 to discuss our research and technology development (see visitor list, Appendix 7). This face-to-face interaction has proved highly effective both for CCFS researchers and industry colleagues.

• CCFS publications, preprints and non-proprietary reports are available on request for industry libraries.

• CCFS participants were prominent in delivering keynote and invited talks and workshop modules, and convening sessions relevant to mineral exploration at national and international industry peak conferences in 2016 (see Abstracts, Appendix 6).

A full list of previous GEMOC publications is available at here

Current industry-funded collaborative research projects

These are brief descriptions of current CCFS projects that have direct cash support from industry, most with combinations from ARC, internal University or State Government support. Projects are both national and global. In addition to these formal projects, many shorter projects are directly funded byindustry, and the results of these feed into our basic research databases (with varied confidentiality considerations). Such projects are administered bythe commercial arms of the relevant universities (e.g. AccessMQ Limited, at Macquarie).

CCFS industry collaborative projects are designed to develop the strategic and applied aspects of the basic research programs, and many are based on understanding the architecture of the lithosphere and the nature of Earth’s geodynamic processes that have controlled the evolution of the lithosphere and its important discontinuities. Basic research strands translated to strategic applications include the use of geochemical data integrated with tectonic analyses and large-scale datasets (including geophysical) to understand the relationship between lithosphere domains and large-scale mineralisation. The use of sulfides to date mantle events, and the characterisation of crustal terrane development using U-Pb dating and Hf isotopic compositions of zircons (TerraneChron® ) are being developed as a regional isotopic mapping tools for integration with geophysical modelling.