Prof Harry Bhadeshia, Dr Chinnapat Panwisawas and PhD student Rajdeep Mondal spent a week in Peru visiting the team at Molycop, a leading manufacturer of steel grinding media, based in Australia, Peru, Chile, and the USA.

Molycop is sponsoring Rajdeep’s research, developing a unique computer program that predicts the structure and properties of steel grinding media – media which is used globally in the minerals industry to crush mined materials into powders.

During their visit, they toured Molycop’s manufacturing facilities at two locations in Peru at Lima and Arequipa. The Arequipa industrial plant is close to a large copper mine, in a desert landscape, and takes about two hours to reach by plane from Lima.

The Queen Mary researchers also met with their metallurgical and manufacturing teams for technical discussions, and on the last day, a large group of Molycop staff attended talks given by the trio. In one of these talks, they demonstrated the computer program developed by Rajdeep, and allowed the Molycop staff to have a go at applying it.

This visit continues an existing fruitful relationship between Queen Mary researchers and Molycop. Molycop have previously visited the UK to spend time with the Queen Mary team, and Dr Hamid Pourasiabi from Molycop Australia has previously presented an inspiring talk about our collaboration in the undergraduate module EMS523U on phase transitions, led by Dr Haixue Yan.