Don’t dismiss small grants, they help you grow

Kevin Galvin, laureate professor at the University of Newcastle in Australia, has saved the mining industry billions of dollars with his innovations. He tells Gerd Winter that bridging the gap between industry and academia was vital for his career.

Kevin Galvin has dedicated much of his research to improving the separation of particles in the processing of coal and other mineral ores. A significant amount of valuable material is often discarded with the waste stream, called tailings, and these losses not only reduce the industry’s profitability but also have a negative environmental impact. 

Galvin’s focus is on recovering smaller particles, which is a major challenge in the mining industry. His greatest success to date, the Reflux Classifier, ingeniously adapts methods used in the mineral ore processing and petroleum industries to separate fine mineral particles by size and density.