Mining innovation born from sabotaged research transforms tailings management

A vindictive equipment operator’s act of sabotage in 1989 led to an internationally significant breakthrough in mining waste management. Simran Gill speaks to David Smirk, the founder of Phibion, a Top 10 Gold Award winner at @AuManufacturing’s recent Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers awards.

David Smirk, founder and non-executive director of Phibion, tells the @AuManufacturing Conversations podcast that he was a young honours student at Murdoch University when an unnamed Alcoa operator deliberately drove through his six-month research project on tailings dewatering, destroying all instrumentation in what appeared to be a malicious prank.

“I was smiling all the way as he watched my reaction from the shore,” Smirk recalls of the 1989 incident. 

“It was a little rude, and I was very upset.”

However, when Smirk later examined the data from his destroyed experiment, he discovered something unprecedented that would eventually transform his career. 

“The penny dropped that something was going on that I wasn’t expecting. And to the best of my knowledge, no one else had seen before,” he said.

That accidental discovery became the foundation for Phibion’s revolutionary Accelerated Mechanical Consolidation (AMC) technology and their flagship innovation, the “Mud Master”—described by Smirk as the world’s only autonomous twin Archimedes screw tractor designed specifically for tailings management.

According to Smirk, this machine can deliver remarkable efficiency improvements. 

“We were actually able to reduce that two-year period down to six weeks. And that’s something like a 95 per cent reduction in that time,” he said, referring to work at Worsley Alumina in Western Australia.

Speaking on the podcast, Smirk highlights a fundamental industry challenge: “We arguably know more about the surface of the moon than we know about some of the physical characteristics of tailings in the center of some of our larger tailings dams across the world.”

The technology addresses what Smirk describes as operators being “responsible for things that I couldn’t quantify,” where mining companies typically extract only small percentages of valuable material, leaving the vast majority as tailings requiring safe management.

Smirk claims the company’s success stories span globally, with operations potentially saving communities from economic devastation. 

“We sustained the viability of that employer and it saved thousands of jobs,” he said of work in southern Brazil, where a zinc operation was reportedly running out of tailings capacity.

The Brisbane-based company has accumulated what Smirk states is “over 500,000 hours of experience operating in all types of tailings all over the world,” with machines operating under continuous remote monitoring and global cloud connectivity.

Phibion’s latest development is a real-time density sensor created in collaboration with the University of Queensland. 

“This sensor itself has come out of a rather involved and deep collaborative research project with the University of Queensland,” Smirk explains, describing it as providing unprecedented visibility into tailings conditions.

“I would like to see a world where tailings management is seen as a temporary land use,” Smirk said, outlining his vision for sustainable mining solutions that allow land restoration after operations conclude.

In this episode of @AuManufacturing Conversations, Smirk shares the story of Phibion’s remarkable journey from accidental discovery to award-winning innovation.

Episode guide

00:00 Introduction

02:00 The sabotage story

08:00 What is tailings management?

15:00 The Mud Master breakthrough

25:00 Global success stories

35:00 Future innovations

Picture: supplied

Further reading

This year’s Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers list revealed

Phibion launches MudMaster autonomous tailings system

Queensland machinery maker achieves first Chilean export

Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers is an annual campaign by @AuManufacturing. The current version has been made possible through the generous support of Australia Wide Engineering Recruitment, TXM Lean Solutions, the Industry Capability Network, Bonfiglioli Australia, the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre and the SmartCrete CRC.