�����Ʊ

Rahman Daiyan received $498,500 in Australia's Economic Acecelerator (AEA) Ignite Grant funding for "OzAmmonia: closing the waste NOx cycle via green ammonia production, powered by renewable energy in Australia." The OzAmmonia technology is a patented electrolyser system that generates renewable ammonia from harmful gasses known as “waste NOx”.

MERE PhD researchers Hang Yin, Xu Li, Jason Emery, Linan Su and Xin Zhang received the Dean's Award for Outstanding PhD Theses. This award recognises high quality PhD theses produced at �����Ʊ.

Yu Jing is the Chief Investigator of a new project “Compressed air energy storage in geological porous formation”, which was funded by the �����Ʊ-Chinese Academy of Sciences Collaborative Research Seed Program 2024 (Stage 1).

In this project, two teams aim to develop a novel coupled model to account for all major processes that occur in the power plant and the geo-storage site.

�����Ʊ was named the leading research institution in the field of Mining & Mineral Resources by The Australian.

Each year, The Australian’s Research magazine names the top researcher and the top research institution in each of 250 fields of research, based on the quality and impact of their work.

Duncan Chalmers won Paper of the Year at the 8th Drill & Blast Down Under Conference 2024. He was recognised for the paper "Ignition Mechanisms of Methane Air Mixtures Using Explosives as an Ignition Source", co-authored by �����Ʊ graduates Alison Freeman and Catherine Hart.

• Researchers from MERE and the ARC Training Centre for The Global Hydrogen Economy released a first report exploring the feasibility of collaboration on hydrogen and green metals, as part of the Federal government’s Green Metals for Sustainable Steel from Australia and Germany (SuSteelAG) initiative.
  
  The project – a partnership between the Australian Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) – aims to explore the potential of creating a sustainable green iron and steel value chain between the two countries. It builds upon the �����Ʊ-led ‘’ study that’s investigating the viability of a closer collaboration on renewable hydrogen supply.

• �����Ʊ MERE and AusIMM hosted the 34th Annual General Meeting of the Society of Mining Professors. Under 2024 President Prof. Serkan Saydam, a record 124 attendees from 20 countries and 41 universities came together to discuss the future skills required to thrive in a rapidly transforming landscape and meet the evolving demands of the industry.
  
  This year's theme, “Building Tomorrow Together through Integrating Technology and Embracing Diversity,” reinforced the importance of collaboration, diversity, and innovation in shaping the future of mining research and education.

Honghao Chen received Australia’s Economic Accelerator Seed funding of $197,000. He will partner with JENNMAR Australia on ‘Commercialisation of an anti-corrosion coating technology for underground mine application’. Anti-corrosion coating technology will enhance the safety of underground working environments by protecting roof bolts from corrosion failure, which in turn will prevent roof fall.

MERE lead project ‘Decarbonising the energy and resource sector through knowledge sharing, technology innovation and research collaboration’ has been funded through the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations (NFACR) grants round for 2023-24.

The NFACR is an Australian government initiative, established in 2020, to strengthen understanding and engagement between Australia and China.

Dr Yu Jing published her paper entitled "" in Fuel. In this work, she developed a novel laboratory protocol, using [11C]CO2 as the radiotracer to visualise and quantify in-situ CO2 storage process in coal under positron emission tomography imaging.

�����Ʊ MERE Adjunct Professor Dr Bharath Belle was awarded the Howard L. Hartman award “for outstanding contributions to mine ventilation enhancing health and safety in underground mines.” 

The Award recognizes distinguished contributions in practice, teaching or research in the field of underground ventilation engineering.��

for 2023, granting compute resources on the nation’s peak supercomputing systems, has awarded a grant of 16 Million compute hours to the project "Multi-scale multi-physics modelling for geostorage applications" headed by , alongside , , and .��

In this project 3D/4D high-resolution representations of heterogeneous porous media, extracted by dynamic tomography and super-resolution techniques, are utilized to model multi-phase flow through porous media via lattice Boltzmann methods. These calculations offer deep insights into pore-scale processes controlling geological carbon capture and hydrogen storage scenarios.

A team led by Professor Serkan Saydam received a RIS 2023 grant for their research “Cooling/heating temperature-controlled rock/soil testing system for extreme environment”. The project will provide new, fundamental knowledge into mechanical behaviours of rocks/soil on- and off-Earth at very high/low-temperature conditions under compression and tension. This will help develop robust methods for practical applications for on- and off-Earth geomechanics engineering.

A team led by the University of Auckland, with �����Ʊ-Lead Professor Christoph Arns, received a LIEF 2023 grant for their research titled “Integrated facility for underground hydrogen storage research”. The aim is to establish a state-of-the-art national research facility for hydrogen flow in porous media, enabling Australia to make technological breakthroughs in critical areas of the economy, such as clean energy.

The Hydrogen Storage and Production was held 20 – 21 October 2022 at �����Ʊ, organised by a steering committee from the University of New South Wales (�����Ʊ) and the University of Adelaide and received sponsorship from the Office of the Chief Scientist and Engineer of the NSW government. Covering two days of presentations and discussion on the latest research findings, technical solutions, and future directions, this event brought together the key players in hydrogen storage and production with an emphasis on underground hydrogen storage.

An international collaboration on space resource engineering has led to Prof Serkan Saydam, Prof Andrew Dempster (EET/ACSER), A/Prof Joung Oh and  PhD student Nicholas Barnett visiting the and Seoul National University (SNU). The visit took place from August 23-26 and was funded by the Australian-Korean Foundation and aims to increase the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between �����Ʊ and KICT on lunar mining projects. The visit led to workshops and seminars for staff and students at both institutions and will increase exchange opportunities and further visits to South Korea.

Dr Yu Jing and her team have been awarded a usage grant for the light source at the , a major research facility in Melbourne. It is built for experiments using the powerful synchrotron light to examine the molecular and atomic details of materials. This project (in-kind ANSTO Grant Value ~ $131K) will dynamically image multiphysical phenomena during the processes of CO2 geological storage.

. A highly prestigious and internationally recognised scholarship, the Fulbright award will foster bi-national collaboration between Australia and the USA on research in hydrogen storage. The project will be hosted by Kansas State University and will be funded by the Kinghorn Foundation.

• Professor Serkan Saydam and Professor Andrew Dempster have been granted an ARC LIEF Grant for “The Space Resources Environmental Analogue Facility (SREAF)”. The grant of $2.1m will be used to create a space testing facility in collaboration with Queensland University of Technology.
• Dr Binghao Li has received a successful grant under the . The grant of $100k will be for a feasibility study that evaluates the technical feasibility of Ultra-Wide Band based positioning system for the Hyperlocal Navigation Challenge.