Australian Critical Minerals Research & Development Hub

The Australian Critical Minerals Research and Development Hub (the Hub) unites the expertise of top Federal science agencies: ANSTO, Geoscience Australia, and CSIRO with the aim of addressing technical challenges and drive collaborative research across the critical minerals value chain.

Collaborating with industry, universities and the research community, this initiative will support clean energy initiatives and aligns with Australia’s net zero policy agenda, as outlined in the Critical Minerals Strategy 2023-2030.

The Hub’s top priorities are to:

Scale-up and commercialise critical minerals research and development, focusing on supply chains of national strategic significance.

Coordinate, guide, and prioritise critical minerals research and development efforts across Australia.

Connect critical minerals projects with the on-shore technical and research expertise.

Support strategic international collaboration and science diplomacy in the critical minerals sector.

Visit the Australian Critical Minerals R&D Hub

The Hub research projects

ANSTO's experts are delivering sustainable technical solutions that support developers to boost onshore investment. These projects are supporting the growth of Australia's critical minerals processing industry.

High Purity Silica Minerals Systems Study

This project will provide access to the technologies and know-how required for High Purity Quartz (HPQ) production, in particular, high temperature chlorination for all future Australian projects.

To complement Geoscience Australia’s work researching high purity silica, ANSTO will be developing processing routes for High Purity Quartz (HPQ) production from Australian quartz and silica sand projects.

HPQ is used for the manufacture of the consumables (fused quartz products) required in elemental silicon production, plus a range of optical and specialty applications.

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Critical Minerals Byproduct Potential

This project seeks to develop methodologies and tools to help understand Australia’s geological resource potential for by-product critical minerals and lead research into development opportunities.

This project will have an initial focus on developing methodology and output tools to support understanding gallium, germanium and indium potential from Australian zinc deposits.

ANSTO is undertaking desktop studies and test work on the technical recovery of germanium from zinc ores and desktop investigations for the extraction of gallium from bauxite refining process liquors.

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Accelerating Development of Australia’s Rare Earth Resources

ANSTO was awarded $13.9 million for a research project to accelerate the discovery, extraction and processing of rare earth elements from lower grade deposits (January 2024).

Rare earth elements (REEs) are vital for the development of components used to manufacture key technologies needed for a net zero future, such as electric vehicles and wind turbines. This project aims to increase and improve the knowledge needed to unlock the potential of clay-hosted REE deposits (including ionic adsorption REE deposits).

ANSTO will develop different processing routes of clay-hosted REE deposits, whilst also maintaining a focus on operating costs and environmental outcomes.

In order to create a resilient and sustainable supply chain of REEs, Australia will need to identify diverse resources of these elements.

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