Mr Steven Wright is a Senior Experimental Scientist at CSIRO Process Sceince and Engineering.

Mr Steven Wright: examining smelting and roasting chemistry

Mr Steven Wright's research focuses on reducing the release of minor elements to the biosphere during the smelting and refining steps of base metal production.

• 1 March 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications
• Achievements

Current activities

Mr Steven Wright is a Senior Experimental Scientist working with CSIRO Process Science and Engineering.

Mr Wright's current research interests include:

• impurity and tramp element control
• sustainable metal production and recycling
• physical properties (viscosity, thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity) of high temperature solids and liquids
• mechanisms of the interactions between slag and refractories, and ways to reduce refractory wear
• thermodynamic properties of high temperature liquid phases and the application of mathematical models to describe them.

Mr Wright has expertise in:

• designing and undertaking high temperature experimental studies examining the physico-chemical properties of melts, including
  • gas/metal/slag equilibrium studies
  • kinetic studies
  • transport property measurements such as viscosity
• an understanding of the thermodynamic behaviour of metallurgical slags and the interactions of species in the slag with other phases including gas, mattes, liquid alloys, fluxes and refractories
• selecting and applying solution models of melts and appropriate thermodynamic data for calculating equilibria in complex smelting systems and process feasibility studies.

Background

Mr Wright has been in numerous roles since he began his career at CSIRO in 1981.

He has been involved with research on:

• flash smelting
• alumina smelting
• intensive smelting
• pyrometallurgy studies
• high temperature processing.

Much of his previous research has been equilibrium studies, physical properties studies or kinetic studies on key high temperature systems where experimental data for model development (thermodynamic or otherwise) was lacking or of poor quality.

These studies examined the effects of key parameters on the chemical and thermodynamic behaviour of a species in a slag, or of a bulk physical property. 

Mr Wright's research has included:

• examining the redox behaviour of iron at low levels in ironmaking slags 
• determining the thermodynamic behaviour of copper, iron and nickel in complex copper mattes 
• measuring the effect of solid particles on the viscosity of a blast furnace type slag
• examining the effects of transition metals on the kinetics of slag-refractory reactions.

Academic qualifications

Mr Wright has completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours from the University of Western Australia.

Achievements

Mr Wright is a member of the:

• Minerals, Metals and Materials Society
• Association for Iron and Steel Technology.

Read about CSIRO's research on High temperature processing.