First post
Seven weeks into my PhD, I've decided to start a blog, to (a) make it easy for friends and family to exactly what I do at uni all day, (b) create an 'online presence', which is apparently becoming increasingly important in academia, and (c) for the purely selfish purpose of having something to look back on when I finish. And possibly also somewhere to rant other than in my friends ears...
My PhD research aims to design a specific treatment to trigger and accelerate soil formation on bauxite residue mud. For anyone unfamiliar with bauxite residue mud (also known as 'red mud' - I remember my Year 12 Chem teacher calling it by this name), it's an alkaline, sodic waste slurry generated during the Bayer process. The Bayer process is the process by which alumina is extracted from bauxite (aluminium ore, of which Western Australia is a major global producer). Bauxite is crushed and then boiled in concentrated, hot sodium hydroxide solution (hence the alkalinity of the residue), dissolving aluminium hydroxide (which is turned into alumina), and leaving behind non-alkali soluble residue. The residue mainly consists of iron oxides, quartz, sodium aluminosilicate clays, and some aluminium (oxy)hydroxides.
With a pH of around 13 and a texture resembling pottery clay, plants aren't too keen on growing in the residue mud. My research will hopefully identify ways in which the residue can be encouraged to develop more desirable properties through triggering, accelerating, and steering the natural process of pedogenesis (soil formation) by way of imposed treatments such as nutrient addition or irrigation. This will remove the need for capping layers to be placed over residue mud deposits and will allow the reclaimed land area to be used for cropping, housing, or native vegetation reserves.
So that's the goal, I guess. The last seven weeks have been spent researching and preparing a research proposal and seminar, and attending to 'unfinished business' from my Honours project, which was conducted on a similar topic (in situ neutralisation of bauxite residue by cross-layer leaching)...and a manuscript based on my third year project which was on an unrelated topic (organic substrates in bioremediation of acidic saline drainage waters by sulfate-reducing bacteria). Despite the distractions of work from other projects, things seem to be moving along at a reasonable pace so far and I'm hoping to get into some field work within the next month.
For anyone interested in hearing more about my proposed study, I'll be presenting my research proposal seminar this Friday (April 24) at 1pm in the Webb Lecture Theatre (Geology and Geography building, G.21).