Collaboration with Ex Mente

Ex Mente is an independent metallurgical engineering company that applies science and technology to enhance the success and long-term sustainability of the pyrometallurgical industry. Ex Mente and CIRG commenced a collaborative project in 2024 with the goal of accelerating thermochemical equilibrium calculations via AI methodologies.

Thermochemical equilibrium calculations (TECs) are based on the second law of thermodynamics. The Gibbs energy of a system is minimised within mass conservation constraints. Because the algorithm solves a non-linear constrained optimisation problem, it is slow, and it becomes slower as the number of system components (chemical elements) increase. Because of their computational expense, TECs cannot be integrated into large-scale process models or multiphysics models of high-temperature metallurgical processes. If TECs could be made orders of magnitude faster, they could be combined into such models so that more environmentally friendly production processes can be developed more rapidly.

In recent times the concept of "physics-informed" neural networds (PINNs) have been used to accelerate the solution of large continuum mechanics problems. The goal of the collaborative project is to investigate whether similar methods can be used to accelerate TECs. Two students are working towards this goal: Kleinboy Mthimunye (Honours) and Klara Meyer (MSc). Kleinboy is testing a data-driven approach to TECs, while Klara is developing physics-informed models. We hope that the outcomes of these research projects will take us to a greener future.