News

On November 8, 2019, the EIT RawMaterials AWARE consortium is organising a mini-symposium on raising awareness on recycling of electronic waste. The event is co-organised by Recupel, SUMA and SIM² KU Leuven. Registration is now open.

CaO-FeOx-SiO2 slags can be used as raw material for alkali-activated materials, i.e. a green alternative to Portland cement. In Cement and Concrete Research, KU Leuven & Princeton University researchers reveal new insights into the reaction mechanisms.

Between 27 and 30 August Glasgow University held the 15th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits in Glasgow, which for the first time had a room dedicated to “The changing face of metal extraction – geology, biology and geometallurgy”. The big attendance to this conference room from the geological community was exceptional and it also has ...

Registration for the 5th International Symposium on Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM V; Leuven (Belgium), February 6, 2020) is now open. The event will further develop the lessons learned from ELFM IV and from the 2nd seminar on ELFM in the European Parliament.

Within the SMART project, Nerea Rodriguez et al. have shown that Deep Eutectic Solvents based on carboxylic acids and choline chloride are not stable in time nor at high temperatures. The work was published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

Several PhD-students of the ETN NEW-MINE project will discuss the state-of-the-art of waste management and debate the policy changes needed to foster landfill mining in Europe at the 17th International Waste Management and Landfill Symposium (Sardinia 2019) in Italy.

The EC’s Joint Research Centre has published a milestone report on the recovery of cricial raw materials (CRMs) from mining waste and landfills. SIM² KU Leuven & EURELCO coordinator Peter Tom Jones discusses the key conclusions of the report.

Last week the global association for rare-earth industry stakeholders, was officially erected. SIM² KU Leuven is happy to have contributed to this milestone for the global rare earth community and will continue to support “REIA”.

The EU Research Executive Agency selected DEMETER as the Marie Skłodowska Curie project to be featured in the REA 10th anniversary video. Gwen Bailey explains the importance of the DEMETER research for clean mobility in the EU.

“Ensuring that ‘Social License to Operate’ (SLO) is Adaptive and Resilient” was the topic of a recent workshop organized by EU MIREU (supported by NEMO, CROCODILE & TARANTULA). This article reflects upon the key lessons learned.

The ETN SULTAN team has just released its official (animated) video on the reprocessing of tailings. SULTAN Researcher Jillian Helser explains how the SULTAN target is to transform mining waste (tailings) into valuable products.

High level expert panel workshop on Social License to Operate, followed by a SLO clustering event organised by the NEMO, CROCODILE and TARANTULA projects teams.

Germanium is a precious metal which is mainly used as a semiconductor in electronics and infrared optic industries, and as a polymerisation catalyst for the production of polyethylene terephthalate. Due to its high supply risk and its high economic importance, germanium is considered as one of Europe’s critical metals

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.