Canadian company to expand comminution research in SA

The South Australian Government has announced that a Canadian-based mining innovation company, Rockburst Technologies, is the latest company to benefit from funding as part of the South Australian Landing Pad program to establish operations in South Australia.

Founded in 2020, the company develops innovative technology for mining comminution — the process that breaks rock to liberate minerals and that is responsible for 14% of electricity consumption in Australia — with the technology showing evidence of energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction of 50–88% compared to existing technologies.

The company, which is already engaging with BHP Olympic Dam in order to assess the technology’s capabilities, has plans to continue with the development of this technology in South Australia in collaboration with industrial and research partners.

The company plans to continue with the development of this technology in South Australia in collaboration with industrial and research partners with a five-year plan to hire a business development director, project manager and five-person-strong development team with supporting contractors.

“With our first client, BHP Olympic Dam based in Adelaide, we intend to continue working with them, and furthermore, we will be exploring space mining/recycling applications of our technology in collaboration with the University of Adelaide and its Lunar Construction Group,” said Oscar Malpica, CEO and Co-Founder of Rockburst Technologies. “The South Australian Landing Pad will support Rockburst Technologies to hire key staff and essentially kick-start our first international subsidiary outside of Canada.

“We are convinced that the mature mining ecosystem of South Australia with the many players in critical minerals and cement, coupled with solid mining and energy efficiency and R&D institutions, is fertile ground for the research, development and commercialisation of our Transcritical CO2 Pulverisation (tCO2) technology.”

In a previous announcement, the company said it will be initiating a research collaboration with Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources as well as their Lunar Construction Group of the University of Adelaide to investigate potential applications for material recycling in zero-gravity environments, since the technology breaks rock from within and does not need gravity and other materials to do so. The company says it envisions applications where tCO2 could contribute to the recycling and reuse of valuable resources that are shipped to space missions and off-world bases.

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