News

“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.

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.

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.

New PhD on innovative technologies for REE recovery from bauxite residue On January 23rd, 2018, Rodolfo Marin Rivera obtained his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering. He successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled ‘Innovative technologies for rare earth element recovery from bauxite residue‘. (Leuven, 23/01/2019) The research was supervised by Prof. Tom Van Gerven (promoter), Prof. Koen Binnemans (co-promotor) and Dr. Ghania Ounoughene ...

  On 23rd November, 2018, Wenzhong Zhang successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in chemistry at the University of Helsinki. The title of the dissertation is “Metal(IV) Phosphate Based Functional Materials For Selectively Harvesting Rare-Earth Elements From  Bauxite Residue”. Professor Freddy Kleitz, University of Vienna, served as the opponent, and Professor Gareth Law as the custos. The press release from the ...

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.

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.