SULTAN, the EU Training Network for the remediation and reprocessing of sulphidic mining waste sites, has launched its long-awaited Thematic Section in the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy, comprising 10 research papers.

The 2-day symposium “(Re)Mining extractive waste, a new business?” gathers leading experts in the field of (re)mining of mining-related waste, with a focus on the tailings that arise during the mining and processing of sulphidic ores.

On April 27 more than 220 people participated in the event “Can the recycling of mining waste become a new business?” Three experts from EC DG ENV, Boliden & Cronimet shared their views. Here are the main lessons learned…

SOLVOMET/SIM2 KU Leuven & VITO researchers developed a process to recover copper from dilute ammoniacal leachates of microwave-roasted Cu-Zn-Pb sulphidic tailings. The work was published in Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy.

Within the ETN SULTAN project, Wienerberger & SIM² KU Leuven researchers studied the potential blending of sulfidic mining waste in new ceramic roof tiles and blocks. The work was published in Journal of Geochemical Exploration.

Registrations are open for the Lunch Event “Recycling mining waste, a new business? (27 April 2021, 12.30-13.30 pm CET). Three experts will share their views on the recycling of mining waste, covering a variety of case studies.

Researchers from the Montanuniversität Leoben and SIM² KU Leuven have published a review paper on the academic output that was generated within the EU ETN NEW-MINE project on Resource Recovery from Enhanced Landfill Mining.

In a new Journal of Cleaner Production paper, SIM² KU Leuven & University of Tartu investigated the presence of natural radionuclides in bauxite residue subjected to a neutralisation-leaching process and smelting-leaching process.

Within the framework of the MSCA-ETN SULTAN project SIM² KU Leuven researchers have characterised the historic Zn-Pb mine waste from the tailings pond located at Plombières, East Belgium. The work was published in Minerals.

Participate to our survey on landfill mining, help us clarify the relations between different societal impacts and support a good cause of your choice. All at once!

In the framework of ETN SULTAN, SIM² KU Leuven researchers have assessed the chemical and mineralogical characterisation of sulphidic mine waste to understand the environmental & health risks of the metals within the mine waste.

A joint team of SIM² KU Leuven/SOLVOMET & ArcelorMittal researchers have just published a critical review paper on the hydrometallurgical recovery of metals from steel industry by-products in the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy.

A team of SIM² KU Leuven/SOLVOMET & ArcelorMittal researchers has developed an ammoniacal leaching process to valorise Zn-rich BOF sludges from the steel industry. The work was published in the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy.

Researchers from KTH published a paper (Journal of Cleaner Production) on pyrolysis experiments on excavated waste in a lab-scale reactor. The work was performed in the context of the Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM) concept.

The past four years, 15 early stage researchers were trained by the NEW-MINE project to develop cost-effective, environmentally friendly practices and regulatory frameworks for Enhanced Landfill Mining. They found innovative ways to convert the waste streams into recyclables and high-added value outputs.

To mine or not to mine our 500,000+ landfills in Europe, that was the question addressed in MSCA-ETN NEW-MINE. In this final Policy Brief, the project coordinator addresses the impact of climate change on the safety of landfills.

In March 2015 the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy (JSM) launched its first issue. Now, just more than 5 years, JSM obtained its first Impact Factor. With a score of 2,109, the journal ranks second among TMS journals for 2019.

“The Missing Link of the Circular Economy 2.0” video shows why the waste of the past cannot be consigned to oblivion. A comprehensive Circular Economy vision should, therefore, find answers for Europe’s 500,000+ landfills.

How feasible is the transition to a climate-neutral economy (European Green Deal) in terms of the availability of the required (critical) metals? During the March 12 Seminar in Brussels an expert panel tried to provide answers.

Steelmaking processes generate diverse by-products. The Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy published a review paper on pyrometallurgical valorisation techniques. However, BOF sludge, as targeted in SAMEX, remains a huge challenge.

“The Dark Side of the Circular Economy” is the title of the ELFM V Symposium Aftermovie (5-2-2020). Referring to the EC’s pending Circular Economy Action Plan the video highlights one major blind spot in this plan. How will we deal with the waste of the past?

Register now for a seminar on “Green transition challenged by the metal supply chain”. The event takes place on March 12, 2020 in the Flemish Parliament in Brussels (Belgium). Various EU H2020 projects will cluster around the challenges they face.

“Inconvenient truths of the circular economy” is the title of an interview with prof. Markus Reuter for the Aurubis magazine in which the main challenges and opportunities of recycling and the circular economy are analyzed.

The Detritus Journal dedicated a special issue on resource recovery through Enhanced Landfill Mining (December 2019). It includes the results of the NEW-MINE project. These and other findings will be debated during the Fifth ELFM Symposium on February 6, 2020 in Leuven (Belgium).

Public acceptance or the ‘Social License to Operate’ is widely acknowledged as the biggest financial risk for the mining sector. Six different perspectives and recommendations coming from six different sectors were debated during a satellite event of the EU Raw Materials Week (22 Nov. 2019).

The short movie ‘Stairway to Sustainability’ reveals the results of the MSCA-ETN SOCRATES project. The researchers have found ways to transform the various metal-containing industrial process residues into recyclables and high-added value outputs. And they even made a staircase out of it!

The Science, Engineering & Technology Group of KU Leuven, Faculty of Engineering Technology, Department of Materials Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering, has a joint, full-time academic vacancy in the area of metal recovery from mineral flows. We...

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.

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.

Recently the mid-term event of the Interreg RAWFILL project took place in Cuves (France). More than 40 participants discussed the first results on the enhanced landfill inventory structure and the decision support tool, and the use of geophysical methods to select the most profitable landfill mining projects.

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.

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.

On February 26, 2019, the Interreg Europe project COCOON hosted a workshop on “Landfill management: from landfill to useful resource” at the World Resources Forum in Antwerp (Belgium). All presentations are now available.

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.

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 the iconic World Resources Forum 2019 (Antwerp), the Interreg Europe COCOON project team is hosting the workshop “landfill management: from landfill to useful resource” on February 26, 2019.

How is Europe going to deal with the legacy of more than 500,000 landfills? More than 50 experts debated this question during the 2nd ELFM Seminar in the European Parliament (November 20, 2018), which was hosted by Belgian MEP Hilde Vautmans (ALDE Group). A detailed...

On 20-11-2018, the 2nd ELFM EP Seminar took place. A full house of experts participated in an interactive debate about developing a dynamic landfill management strategy for Europe. Peter Tom Jones provides a first analysis.

EURELCO and the EU Training Network for Resource Recovery Through Enhanced Landfill Mining (ETN NEW-MINE) call for papers on Enhanced Landfill Mining for a Thematic Issue in the IWWG Journal Detritus (Deadline: 11-6-2019).

In preparation of the 2nd ELFM Seminar in the European Parliament (20-11-2018), ETN NEW-MINE has published a new Policy Brief: “Why Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM) needs to be politically acknowledged to facilitate sustainable management of European landfills”.

The 6th EURELCO General Assembly meeting takes place on November 21, 2018 at the Flemish Public Waste Agency (OVAM, Belgium). The GA is organised the day after the 2nd ELFM Seminar in the EP in Brussels. Registration is now open.

Three years after the 1st ELFM Seminar in the EP, the 2nd Seminar – entitled “Towards a dynamic landfill management and mining strategy for Europe’s 500,000+ landfills” – takes place on November 20, 2018. Registration is now open.

On July 2nd, 2018, Dženita Avdibegović (SIM² KU Leuven) obtained her PhD degree in Chemistry. She successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled ‘Recovery of rare earths from bauxite residue leachates by functionalised sorbents‘.

Three years after the first ever Seminar on Enhanced Landfill Mining in the European Parliament, EURELCO can now announce it will organise a follow-up EP Seminar on 20-11-2018, co-organised by ETN NEW-MINE and SIM² KU Leuven.

Recently, the International Waste Working Group (IWWG) launched a new Multidisciplinary Journal for Waste Resources and Residues. The journal has been named Detritus to convey a truly international flavour (the term derives from Latin). In its second Volume (June...

Euronews-Futuris has released a new video on the topic of Enhanced Landfill Mining. What is rubbish for most people, waste is seen as a treasure trove to scientists and waste managers.

EURELCO was presented in an oral presentation at the specific session on the redevelopment of landfills during a seminar of the brownfield foundation in Ghent (Belgium) on March 28, 2018. The brownfield foundation is an organisation in Flanders that promotes the...

SIM² KU Leuven is delighted to announce that the four-year Horizon 2020 NEMO project, which stands for the “Near-zero-waste recycling of low-grade sulphidic mining waste for critical-metal, mineral and construction raw-material production in a circular economy”, has...

The ELFM IV organising committee is happy to share the 5-minute video of the 4th Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM IV) Symposium (February 5-6, 2018). The video integrates a large number of testimonials and diverse perspectives from the European Commission, academia,...

On September 10-12, 2018, the Summer School “To mine or not to mine – A multi-criteria assessment of the landfill mining of municipal and industrial solid waste deposits” is organised in Leuven (Novotel). The Summer School is a joint initiative of the EU Horizon 2020...

April, 24, 2018 Geneva (Switzerland) The Symposium reflects on the future availability of secondary raw materials and the need for a unifying global standard – the United Nations Framework Classification (UNFC), to manage anthropogenic resources in a circular economy,...

NEW-MINE project has just published a 6-page Policy Brief on the future of Enhanced Landfill Mining in Europe and beyond.

Following the Symposium on Transitioning to a Low-Carbon Economy – the Social License to Operate for the Mining and Recycling of Critical Metals (21 February 2018, Leuven, Belgium) the two EU Horizon 2020 projects SOCRATES and METGROW+ joined forces to publish a...

On 21 February 2017, SIM² KU Leuven attended in Cardiff (Wales) the closing conference of the INSPIRE project. This project, a collaboration between the universities of Cardiff, Warwick and the West of England, was about the “in-situ resource extraction from waste...

Overcoming challenges in the circular economy In this first EU MSCA-ETN SOCRATES Policy Brief, guest authors – Justin Salminen and Sirpa Olaussen from Boliden – provide their view on the challenges with respect to the zero-waste valorisation of low-grade ores and...

SMART GROUND aims at improving the availability and accessibility of data and information on Secondary Raw Materials (SRM) in the EU territory. Therefor the consortium carried out a set of activities to integrate all the data form existing sources and new information...

Three EU-projects on landfill management and/or mining were presented at the joint SMART GROUND - COCOON - RAWFILL workshop that was held in Mechelen (Belgium) on February 7, 2018. An international public of more than 100 people from academia, policy makers, companies...

The joint RAWFILL / EURELCO working group on promoting landfill mining policy in the EU was a great success. More than 20 participants from 8 EU member states participated in an animated discussion on (legal) barriers for LFM and legal and policy aspect of LFM. As...

Registrations are open for the Lunch Event “Recycling mining waste, a new business? (27 April 2021, 12.30-13.30 pm CET). Three experts will share their views on the recycling of mining waste, covering a variety of case studies.

Researchers from the Montanuniversität Leoben and SIM² KU Leuven have published a review paper on the academic output that was generated within the EU ETN NEW-MINE project on Resource Recovery from Enhanced Landfill Mining.

In a new Journal of Cleaner Production paper, SIM² KU Leuven & University of Tartu investigated the presence of natural radionuclides in bauxite residue subjected to a neutralisation-leaching process and smelting-leaching process.

Within the framework of the MSCA-ETN SULTAN project SIM² KU Leuven researchers have characterised the historic Zn-Pb mine waste from the tailings pond located at Plombières, East Belgium. The work was published in Minerals.

Participate to our survey on landfill mining, help us clarify the relations between different societal impacts and support a good cause of your choice. All at once!

In the framework of ETN SULTAN, SIM² KU Leuven researchers have assessed the chemical and mineralogical characterisation of sulphidic mine waste to understand the environmental & health risks of the metals within the mine waste.

A joint team of SIM² KU Leuven/SOLVOMET & ArcelorMittal researchers have just published a critical review paper on the hydrometallurgical recovery of metals from steel industry by-products in the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy.

A team of SIM² KU Leuven/SOLVOMET & ArcelorMittal researchers has developed an ammoniacal leaching process to valorise Zn-rich BOF sludges from the steel industry. The work was published in the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy.

Researchers from KTH published a paper (Journal of Cleaner Production) on pyrolysis experiments on excavated waste in a lab-scale reactor. The work was performed in the context of the Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM) concept.

The past four years, 15 early stage researchers were trained by the NEW-MINE project to develop cost-effective, environmentally friendly practices and regulatory frameworks for Enhanced Landfill Mining. They found innovative ways to convert the waste streams into recyclables and high-added value outputs.

To mine or not to mine our 500,000+ landfills in Europe, that was the question addressed in MSCA-ETN NEW-MINE. In this final Policy Brief, the project coordinator addresses the impact of climate change on the safety of landfills.

In March 2015 the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy (JSM) launched its first issue. Now, just more than 5 years, JSM obtained its first Impact Factor. With a score of 2,109, the journal ranks second among TMS journals for 2019.