On April 1-5, 2019, the 6th Slag Valorisation Symposium took place. More than 200 persons experienced at first hand that slag valorisation has been transformed from an academic concept into an industrial success story.

In the framework of the EU MSCA-ETN REDMUD project, the occurrence mode of selected rare earths in neutralised-leached bauxite residue was studied by KU Leuven and NTUA. The work is published in Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy.

Within the EU H2020 SOCRATES project, SIM² KU Leuven developed a process to selectively recover lead and zinc from iron-rich jarosite residue of the zinc industry. The work is published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

Philippe Muchez is professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the KU Leuven and dean of the Faculty of Science. His is head of the Ore Geology and Geofluids research unit and leads the ETN SULTAN project.

EU Horizon 2020 MCSA-ETN SULTAN kicked off in Leuven on February 11, 2019. Key items on the SULTAN Kick-off event agenda: Introduction on project management, training, outreach Pitch presentations by ESRs on their background, project, host institute S/T introduction & WP parallel sessions Secondments Cafe On February 12, the SULTAN ESRs followed a soft-skills training on Non-violent communication On February 13, ...

Recently the use of lead is being called into question by some policy makers. To provide a firm metallurgical background on its crucial role in the Circular Economy, the EU ETN SOCRATES team has just published a new Policy Brief.

In the framework of ETN REDMUD, an integrated process was developed by KU Leuven and RWTH Aachen to selectively recover Fe and REEs from slags produced during smelting of bauxite residue. The work is published in Hydrometallurgy.

ETN DEMETER proudly presents the flagship product of this 4 year-project: the first recyclable e-motor based on recycled NdFeB magnets. Featuring two of the DEMETER Researchers, the video highlights the e-motor’s ecobenefits.

Prof. Valérie Cappuyns is professor at the Faculty of Economics & Business (Campus Brussels). She works in the interdisciplinary research group CEDON. Find out more about Valérie Cappuyns in this SIM² interview.

New work by SIM² KU Leuven researchers published in Resources Conservation and Recycling demonstrates that the government policies have a much larger influence on the rare-earth supply chain disruption than physical disruptions.

How is Europe going to deal with the legacy of more than 500,000 landfills? More than 50 experts debated this question during the 2nd ELFM Seminar in the European Parliament (November 20, 2018), which was hosted by Belgian MEP Hilde Vautmans (ALDE Group). A detailed analysis of this event has now been published as a ETN NEW-MINE Policy Brief, authored ...

The EIT-labelled Master Programme on Sustainable Materials (SUMA) welcomed 24 enthusiastic students in September 2018. This 3rd cohort is the biggest cohort for SUMA so far, with selected candidates coming from all over the world.

SIM² KU Leuven researchers developed a new, selective method to recover indium from iron-rich solutions. This work, funded through EU METGROW+, was published as a golden open access paper in Separation and Purification Technology.

Gwen Bailey, ESR 15 in EU MSCA-ETN DEMETER, was selected as the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Association Fellow of the Week. Gwen will feature in the panel debate “Are REEs still critical?” in the DEMETER Symposium (February 2019).

As China’s insatiable demand for REEs continues to grow over the coming ten years, China’s domestic production will struggle to keep up in all scenarios examined herein, leading the nation to become a net importer of some REEs.