Key Enabler for a Sustainable Circular Economy of Minerals and Metals
The Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HIF) pursues the objective of developing innovative technologies for the economy so that mineral and metalliferous raw materials can be made available and used more efficiently and recycled in an environmentally friendly manner.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart from Technische Universität Dresden visited the HIF
Since March he is appointed for the chair of innovation and technology management at the Dresden university. Dr. Simone Raatz and Prof. Jens Gutzmer informed him about the research at HIF and the successfull spinn-offs. Moreover, the visionaire circulareconomy project FlexiPlant was presented.
Improvement of mineral processing - Helmholtz Association recognizes HZDR-scientist with Doctoral Award
The energy transition, more and more high-tech products, but also supply bottlenecks are putting domestic mining back into the focus of raw material extraction. But, most of the easily exploitable high-grade deposits have already been depleted. For the future, the mining sector will have to efficiently produce metals and minerals from low-grade orebodies with complex mineralogical and microstructural properties. To estimate the resources and reserves contained in a deposit, and to evaluate the potential recovery, modelling tools that are reliable and robust are necessary. Dr. Lucas Pereira from the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HIF) belonging to the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, developed modelling techniques of recovery processes, more specifically mineral separation processes, suited to complex ores. The Helmholtz Association recognizes his thesis with the Doctoral Award in the energy research field for its creative excellence.
FlexiPlant - Research Infrastructure for adaptive processing of complex raw materials
One of the challenges confronting our society today is the sustainable use of our resources. The concept of a circular economy, in which products, materials and components are reused and recycled within a loop, thus generating hardly any waste, is intended to meet this challenge. In order to recover raw materials of all kinds (e.g. rare earth elements) in an energy-efficient and function-preserving way, it is necessary to develop a new generation of adaptive and flexible technologies and digital platforms for the processing and recycling. FlexiPlant will be a globally unique research infrastructure, to develop and test scientific models, methods and technologies for the mechanical processing of raw material in a pilot scale. The digitalization and automation of the processing system are required for transferring the processes to industrial scale. As an open transfer platform, FlexiPlant will provide a variety of research and cooperation opportunities for interested partners from academia, industry and society.