IMER Members Enjoy ARC Grant Success
IMER members gained successful Australian Research Council linkages for funding commencing July 2012.
IMER Director Professor Stephen Grano congratulated the researchers and noted strong industry partnerships showed the genuine relevance and application of the work to solving global challenges.
Professor Martin Kennedy, Dr Rosalind King, Dr David Dewhurst and Dr Simon Holford were part of a successful grant of $A750,000 over four years with partner organisations including Santos Ltd, Department for Manufacturing, Innovation, Trade, Resources and Energy, Government of South Australia, JRS Petroleum Research, Central Petroleum Ltd, Petrofrontier (Australia) Pty Ltd.
The project is called ‘From organo-mineral nanocomposite to Australian basins; an integrated approach to unconventional gas exploration and development'.
Gas production from unconventional shale reservoirs is a potential major energy boom in Australia that will lower carbon emissions over comparable coal and oil use. The geological controls of shale are currently too poorly understood to direct effective exploration. The project will be the largest international effort to develop this knowledge.
Another successful grant involved researchers from the Environmental Impacts of Mineral and Energy Resources Development Program. Associate Professor Jose Facelli, Associate Professor Jennifer Watling and Professor David Chittleborough were part of a successful project titled ‘Root distribution and salinity and soil water dynamics in a chenopod shrubland: implications for restoration ecology.'
This $A200,500 project over 2012 to 2015 has Iluka Resources Ltd as a partner organisation. This project investigates the dynamics of water and roots in soils in arid lands to inform revegetation practitioners on the best approaches to reconstruct soils and vegetation after mineral extraction. The project provides basic information on the function of chenopod shrublands in arid southern Australia that may be affected by climate change.
Another project related to mechanical engineering has implications for the wine industry with partner organisation Orlando Wyndham Group Pty Ltd. This project involves developing a solar thermal powered refrigeration system that is able to build up an ice bank (as a storage) through daily intermittent cycle from late Australian spring. The ice bank will be used in the vintage season in a winery for cooling purposes. The system is able to reduce the carbon footprint of wineries significantly.
Researchers in this $195,000 project (2012-2015) include Associate Professor Eric Hu, Professor Mark Biggs and Dr Lei Chen.
A project related to wind turbines was successful with Associate Professor Nesimi Ertugrul and Associate Professor Wen Soong.
The $A97,653 grant has a project title: ‘High power density, low cogging torque and low-cost micro-scale wind turbine generator system utilising soft magnetic composite materials'.
This project, with partner organisation Intelligent Electric Motor Solutions Pty Ltd, will develop a low-cost, high-performance and high-efficiency micro-scale wind turbine generator using a new magnetic material consisting of iron powder, which can be easily pressed into any desirable shape. This allows considerably simplified manufacturing, greater design flexibility and ease of scaling to higher output powers.
The successful IMER grants were part of The University of Adelaide's 11 new grants totalling more than $A3.64 million.
