<strong>Vacancy for a Post-doc (or PhD*) position for the SMART project – Sustainable Metal Extraction from Tailings </strong> Since the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, the primary mining and metal processing industry has been and still is landfilling and/or stockpiling vast quantities of metal-containing tailings. Especially the older tailing ponds and associated landfills may represent an environmental and health ...

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.

Prof. Koen Binnemans and co-workers (SIM² KU Leuven) have developed a novel non-aqueous solvent extraction system for separation of rare earths.

Researchers at KU Leuven developed a process to obtain leachates from bauxite residue (red mud) with a much higher concentration of scandium than can be achieved via conventional leaching with acids.

The milestone Rare-earth recycling review paper - K. Binnemans et al., Recycling of rare earths: A critical review, J. Clean. Prod. 51 (2013) 1-22 - is the most cited paper in Journal of Cleaner Production published since 2012

SIM² KU Leuven has developed a handy guide on how to deal with the Open Access requirement in EU Horizon 2020 projects. The guide is in the form of a step-by-step diagram that can be downloaded here.

Prof. Koen Binnemans (General Coordinator of MC/MSCA ITN/ETN EREAN, DEMETER and REDMUD was invited to give a talk at the “Critical Raw Materials in Everyday Applications” workshop (Brussels, 26-27 September 2016).

SIM² KU Leuven is delighted to announce that its SBO project “SMART” has been formally approved by SIM & VLAIO. SMART stands for Sustainable Metal Extraction from Tailings SMART is a strategic basic research project within the long-term SIM MaRes programme on “Materials from Solid and Liquid Industrial Process Residues”. The SMART project, which was developed together with SIM KU ...

On 12 September 2016 the official recruitment event took place in Leuven for EU Horizon 2020 MSCA-ETN SOCRATES, a training network project on the zero-waste valorisation of low-grade, critical metal containing industrial process residues. From an initial list of 115 eligible SOCRATES, 28 were preselected for the Recruitment Event where they were interviewed by 15 SOCRATES Supervisors. After a lengthy ...

Three days of lectures by experts in the field, posters by young researchers and world wide networking while in Leuven. This informative summer school was socially highlighted by a pleasant event dinner, and fruitfully capped by a discussion session. We thank all Speakers and Participants for making this summer school happen…and hope our connection in this field will only grow ...