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Professor Mansoor Barati of the department of materials science and engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering has received a Connaught Innovation Award to support his team’s work on a more environmentally sustainable process for extracting nickel.

At one time, nickel smelters in Sudbury emitted more sulphur dioxide than anywhere else in the world, “leaving blackened rocks that are still seen,” Barati says. Although smelting operations are much cleaner today, thanks to the investment of billions of dollars in methods to capture the sulphur dioxide produced, Barati says, his team is determined to move the mining world a giant step further.

“Our group has successfully demonstrated, through extensive empirical tests and theoretical calculations, that nickel extraction from sulfide ores can be achieved by a novel process that eliminates SO2 emission entirely,” Barati says. “Further, the operating temperature in the new process is considerably lower than the conventional smelting techniques; hence the promise of lower energy consumption and plant capital cost.”

The new process has been tested and proven feasible through a three-year research program.

“The next step for our team will be to move the technology to the next level, and test it in a larger scale than laboratory testing,” Barati says. “Through this Connaught Innovation Award, the team plans to work on testing that aids the design of a commercial reactor; the first step in taking the research to real-world.”