An online database developed by a research team from Parker Centre (Karawara, Western Australia; www.parkercentre.com.au) and CSIRO Light Metals Flagship (Clayton, Australia; www.csiro.au/org/LightMetals) has for the first time provided industry, government, researchers and environmental groups with a one-stop, searchable resource containing all public information on bauxite residues, including their characteristics and storage, and details of the original bauxite.
The Bauxite, Residue and Disposal Database (BRaDD) was developed as part of an Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development & Climate project funded by the Australian Government. The project focuses on developing economically viable and environmentally acceptable solutions to the large global volumes of bauxite residue.
Bauxite residue (red mud) is generated as a by-product during the processing of alumina (the feedstock for aluminum production) from bauxite ores. With no successful large-scale commercial uses found thus far, the majority of the residue produced continuously during the 117-year-long history of the alumina industry has ended up stored on land in disposal areas.
The research team realized that the first crucial step in addressing the problem of what to do with this bauxite residue was to gain a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the problem — and this is where BRaDD has initially come into its own.
“The level and types of residue-related information in the database, and the ability to readily interrogate it, make BRaDD an invaluable research and planning tool for anyone with an interest in bauxite residue and its impact on the environment or its potential uses,” says project leader Craig Klauber.
BRaDD includes verifiable, up-to-date profiles of most bauxite-processing alumina refineries known to the team: 90 refineries spread across six continents. “BRaDD provides the first ever worldwide picture across time of the refinery practices, technologies, engineering and science behind bauxite residue management, disposal and storage,” says Klauber.
“Thanks to BRaDD, we now know that worldwide inventory of bauxite residue had reached 2.0 billion metric tons (m.t.) in 2000, and will hit 4.0 billion m.t. around 2015 at its current growth rate of about 120 million m.t./yr,” notes Klauber. “We know the history of disposal practices, where the residue is located and in many cases we also know the nature and volume of the residue in each location. This is critical information when researching options for residue utilization because options will only succeed if a local need can be met with a local source.”
The database enables comparisons between refineries in a way not previously possible. “Alumina companies can use BRaDD to benchmark one refinery against multiple other refineries over a considerable period of time,” says Klauber. “For example, the thickener technology used for residue de-watering in different refineries, or the engineering design of the residue disposal area, can be tracked through time.”
Each refinery profile includes data ranging from the origin, nature and processing of the feed bauxite ore through to treatment, disposal and composition of the resulting residue. All these factors will impact on development of improved means of storage and rehabilitation, and viable options for using up large amounts of residue.
Klauber says that current promising applications include utilization in construction materials such as concrete and road base or in agricultural additives for soil problems. “The power of the database is that it enables users to drill down into the data in order to make informed decisions, such as selecting the best options for management or large-scale use of different residues.”
While BRaDD pulls all the publicly available residue data scattered over a wide range of sources into the one location, this data, whilst already proving to be invaluable, represents the tip of an information iceberg with a considerable proportion not in the public domain.
The team is currently seeking relevant, citable company information to add to the public component to ensure that this free-of-charge database reaches its full potential as the world’s only comprehensive bauxite residue resource of use. For more information, visitwww.csiro.au/products/Bauxite-residue-database.
This press release is based on material previously published in February 2010 online by CSIRO, in this article: www.csiro.au/news/newsletters/Metals/1001_metals/htm/BRaDD.htm