recomine – Holistic Mine Waste Solutions made in Saxony
Results from selected projects of the BMBF WIR! Alliance recomine
recomine is an alliance of predominantly regional partners from industry, science and society in the Erzgebirge (Saxony/Germany). The alliance is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since 2018 with a total of €12.7 million and is coordinated by the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology. With the vision of developing innovative and holistic solutions for mining waste, recomine supports R&D projects that address the intersection of environmental technology, resource technology, Industry 4.0 and social issues. The aim is to bring regional know-how at real development sites together. The Davidschacht tailing in Freiberg is such a site that allows testing new solutions under real conditions. The necessity of innovative technologies is illustrated the new Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management published in 2020 by the International Council on Mining & Metals (ICMM). It was developed in response to recent devastating tailings accidents (e.g. Brumadinho/Brazil in 2019) and is based on the „Zero Harm“ principle. Numerous activities of large mining companies (e.g. BPH, Vale, Rio Tinto) started to promote the development of new approaches as a consequence of the new standard. In 2021, for example, the BHP Tailings Challenge called the global raw material community to submit concepts for the recycling and reduction of mining waste from a large copper mine. recomine succeeded in being among the ten selected from over 150 teams. These teams had to proof their submitted recycling concept in a first phase of the challenge. This success is currently being continued by further promoting and strengthening the transfer of the results from recomine to the global mining industry through the alliance. Direct R&D agreements with mining companies are under negotiation. recomine’s long-term goal is to act as a bridge between regional know-how providers and the global mining industry.
The developed technologies in recomine can be divided into four groups: analysis, avoidance, remining and transformation. While new technologies for the characterization of tailings or mine water play a role in the area of analysis, the area of avoidance deals with technologies to minimize fine-grained tailings in primary ore processing (e.g. machine-learning optimized sensor-based sorting). In remining, processing technologies are developed to recover the remaining metals, even from the previously undevelopable grain size ranges, e.g. by further development of pneumatic flotation. The Transformation then deals with the use of mining waste, e.g. in the building materials sector, and also provides new approaches to renaturation.
The solutions developed can be seen as pieces of a puzzle that can be individually combined as required for old mining waste in order to be able to draw up concepts for the holistic utilization of waste rock piles, tailings, slags and mine water in the future. This colloquium will present promising projects, results and technologies that have been developed under the umbrella of recomine and achieved by partners such as the TU Bergakademie Freiberg or other regional players from science, industry and/or society. The presentations will provide an insight into the work of the alliance and the success stories of the regional players in the field of mining legacy research.
Detailliertes Programm (als PDF-Datei)
Date: 5th June 2024
Venue: hybrid, UBH-0205 (B), Winklerstraße 3
Language: English
Conference Organizers: Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology
Contact: Philipp Büttner
Coordinator recomine-Alliance
Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf Tel.: +49 (0) 351 260-4417
Fax.: +49 (0) 351 260-4440
Chemnitzer Str. 40 | 09599 Freiberg
www.hzdr.de/hif | www.recomine.de
For indigenous communities, universities of developmental countries or persons with low income, we offer a lower price for virtuell participation, depanding on your financial background. Please apply with this form.
