Image courtesy of the Sustainable
Minerals Institute at The University of
Queensland

Sustainable development (SD) opportunities could soon be placed higher on the agenda of engineering firms that design and operate mineral processing plants, thanks to a process known as SUSOP being pioneered in Australia.

SUSOP, short for Sustainable Operations, is designed to shed light on SD at every stage of a project cycle – from initial planning right through to decommissioning and restoration.

Glen Corder, Principal Research Fellow at the Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia explains, ‘We would like to see SUSOP become an industry standard and get more people in mineral processing thinking about the different aspects of sustainability.’

Although procedures such as hazard and operability studies are entrenched in industry to evaluate risks and safety, the SUSOP team has found that there is no analogous approach focusing on SD. Working within the Co-operative Research Centre for Sustainable Resource Processing (CSRP), based in Kensington, Australia, the goal of the three-year project was to make this a reality.

In stage one, the team, comprising experts from academia and industry, pooled their knowledge and experience to develop the concept. The end result was a process with three major elements – identifying sustainability opportunities and risks, evaluating these and deciding which ones to implement.

One of the first, and most vital, activities in the SUSOP process is identifying opportunities to do things differently. ‘We get people thinking about the impact their project will have,’ explains Corder. ‘This could be looking at ways to engage the community, enhance skills or reuse waste. We want to flag up issues not normally found through a risk process – especially at the early stages where there is greatest potential for uptake of alternative project designs.’

In order to make the process relevant and accessible to industry, stage two has seen the group working on two case studies with a major mining company. The first study identified the sustainability opportunities relating to the location of a new mineral processing plant (at the concept phase) while the second examined the performance of a range of effluent treatment options at the pre-feasibility stage. Both of the case studies involved multiple workshops where a SUSOP facilitator led discussions to explore sustainable options.

The key results of finding ways to support effluent management included  creating local enterprises to provide consumables, and the production of more ‘green’ by-products. Other options included the creation of a small-scale wetland that replaces a more conventional effluent treatment facility. Corder and colleagues are now producing a Foundation Manual that focuses on the concept and pre-feasibility stages of project management. The results of a SUSOP study go into a sustainability register to keep track of every opportunity and risk that has been identified.

Although the three-year term has come to an end, the team is committed to building on its successes and hopes to establish a new centre dedicated to SUSOP.

‘We’d be interested in hearing from anyone who might like to be involved with a SUSOP case study,’ adds Corder. ‘We are certain that our previous client saw value from the process that they would not have seen from standard project management.’