EIT Raw Materials

RIS Education and Entrepreneurship is a centrally steered Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) activity to bring top-down orientation and boost impact and create activities building up capacity for higher education institutions in RIS regions to be able to successfully active partner in local ecosystems and be able to bring products to the market through their innovation activities while connecting KIC education activities with business creating activities supporting action line 2 goals by connecting local RIS players with broader KIC community and programs. These are activities that are carried out on behalf of the RIS hubs by CLC E, CLC BS, CLC SI & partners & RIS task partners

For more information, contact John Whelan: john.whelan@tcd.ie

BetterGeoEdu is a project aimed at strengthening raw materials as a subject in primary schools using gamification. The Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU) has created BetterGeo, a modification for the immensely popular game Minecraft, to spark interest and teach geology to young people by adding realistic geological features, extraction technologies and environmental impacts. The tool has been downloaded over 12 000 times, from Sweden and the EU to the USA and Japan, and has been greatly appreciated by players, teachers, parents, industry and media.

BetterGeoEdu will take the tool further, creating innovative exercises for primary schools using BetterGeo – initiating learning based on playing games and practical exercises. As BetterGeoEdu is driven by a strong interest in young people – playing games – learning can continue in the classroom with teachers, or at home with parents. The project will make the tool more easily accessible for teachers and tailor exercises for classrooms together with experts from the consortium and teachers while testing the exercises with students.

The BetterGeoEdu project is led by SGU, in collaboration with Montanuniversität Leoben, Geological Survey of Slovenia and the AMBER SFI research centre.

For more information and to download the BetterGeoEdu mod, visit https://www.bettergeoedu.com/eng or contact Rachel Kavanagh on kavanara@tcd.ie.

The project focuses on developing low-cost, effective, environmentally friendly biotechnologies that enable the extraction and recovery of metallic raw materials (REE, CRMs, metals) and the release of undesirable components from non-metallic RMs for their better industrial utilisation.  These technologies will enable the valorisation of local sources of raw materials, reducing the need for imported materials.

This project is led by the Technical University of Kosice and involves 16 other partners from across the EIT RawMaterials network.

The TCD contact for the project is Sean Mc Clenaghan (MCCLENS@tcd.ie).  For more information, visit https://eitrawmaterials.eu/successful-launch-of-the-bioleach-innovation-project-supported-by-eit-rawmaterials/

RM@Schools 4.0 is an innovative program to make science education and careers in RM attractive for youngsters. Active learning is proposed to schools by RM ambassadors (experts in some RM-related issues and trained teachers) by involving students in experiments with RM-related hands-on educational kits, in excursions in industries, and in science dissemination activities. The students are asked to become Young RM Ambassadors themselves (science communicators) by creating dissemination products focused on some issue related to RM and/or collaborating with experts in supporting public events.

Local and International Competitions for awarding the best products developed by students, public events as well as an annual European Conference with delegates from European schools (students and teachers) will be annually organized. These events will be the chance for exchanging ideas and experiences in an atmosphere of inclusion and collaboration. In addition, teachers will be trained to become RM Ambassadors themselves in the future at school and digital tools will be developed. All the produced materials will be open and accessible online to everyone on Virtual Centre, the online platform devoted to the project, as well as the best communication materials realised by pupils will be uploaded on the website(http://rmschools.isof.cnr.it/) to be shared with a wider public.

For more information, contact Rachel Kavanagh: kavanara@tcd.ie

Eco-friendly and high-tech devices performance rely on properties obtained by using a wide variety of metals that are extracted from minerals. These sources of metals are found in progressively deeper and scattered deposits, with a complex combination of sulphides. Successful processing of these is therefore key to facing the coming years of extractive technology.

Recovery of metals in most flotation circuits worldwide is affected by the presence of Pyrite, a sulphide species that competes and interacts with flotation reagents, reducing the process efficiency and that constitutes one of the most common gangue sulphides present in mineral ores: c.a. 70%. Today, Pyrite is almost exclusively removed during the flotation process with an expensive depressant step.

The MicroEcos project uses technologies that consume low energy and minimum to zero water to separate pyrite with high selectivity. The Project Output will be a process and equipment at Technology Readiness Level 7 that enables the selective separation of Pyrite yielding higher efficiency and lower costs in the flotation circuit associated with less reagent consumption, and less air inlet and less energy consumption.

This is an upscaling project, whose test bed is located in Boliden Tara Mines Ireland. It receives EIT funding to run from 2017 to 2020 in partnership with Boliden Mineral AB from Sweden, CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), Spain, and Ceinnmat, Spain.

For more information, contact Dámaris Fernandez: DFERNAN@tcd.ie or visit https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/micro-ecos/

Mine Emergency Response and Rescue School (MINERS) aims to create an international program to teach students important skills in fields like mine rescue, emergency response and safety management. The students will not only learn the theoretical backgrounds of national and international safety standards and rescue procedures but they will also be trained under real-life conditions, supported by experts, to learn the proper skills to run a safe and successful rescue mission.

A uniform international mine rescue program will be established that brings together students from different universities trained by international experts, who have personally been involved in mining accidents and have led rescue operations all over the world.

MINERS is led by Montanuniversität Leoben and involves partner Boliden Mineral AB, Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, University of Zagreb, Trinity Centre for Innovative Human Systems and independent expert DI Wilhelm Schön.

For more information on MINERS, contact the TCD lead Siobhan Corrigan at scorrig@tcd.ie or visit https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/miners/

RM Tech Flow is a 2-year lifelong learning project aiming at coaching at least 180 KIC Raw Materials partners’ academics and technology transfer officers in better scouting, analysing and boosting promising technologies towards market exploitation.

The project will train researchers and technologists from KIC universities and research centres in developing and positioning their technologies more in line with the RM industry needs. Meanwhile, the project will train staff from technology transfer offices and innovation management agencies from the KIC in how to get organized to better support the previous. Both target audiences will be offered top-level professional learning experiences such as:

A) 1,5-day face-to-face workshop, featuring seminars, hands-on work on real cases, and discussion of success stories brought by a large company as speakers.
B) MOOC-alike contents made available online, featuring recordings of the main workshop sessions, slides and exercises.
C) Experiential learning through participation in industry trade shows.
D) Experiential learning via the provision of one-to-one technology acceleration coaching services.

The project is led by Hub Innovazione Trentino, in collaboration with AGH University of Science and Technology, FL Smidth, LTU Business, Tecnalia Ventures and Trinity College Dublin.

For more information, contact John Whelan on john.whelan@tcd.ie or visit https://rmtechflow.eitrawmaterials.eu/.

Based on the result of the Gateway-1 project developed in 2016 which created an interactive map of mining projects in emerging and developing countries, the Gateway-2 project aimed at facilitating new collaborative projects of EIT RM partners in developing countries and supporting international business development as well as enhancing local capacity building with education and research activities in those countries.

The project addressed all value chain themes and focused on Latin American and African regions through a consortium of 17 partners, led by the Geological Survey of Finland. By integrating business development activities into existing education, research projects and networks, it formed new approaches to support sustainable business development in developing countries.

For more information, contact Damaris Fernandez at dfernan@tcd.ie or visit https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/gateway/

This project focused on the generation of intelligence, data and information related to the framework conditions to boost innovation relevant to the present and future Mobility Transition trends. It aimed to identify the main conditions and barriers to supporting innovation in this area, particularly in the EU-Africa context. Information was sourced from a wide range of stakeholders in the context of Mobility Transition, with emphasis on resource-rich countries in Africa and their unique selling points compared to other similar stakeholders globally.

Its aim was to create win-win situations for Africa and Europe where both can successfully contribute to a sustainable Mobility Transition in line with Sustainable Development Goals, the Minamata Convention on Mercury, the Paris Climate Agreement, Conflict Minerals monitoring supply chains and other key directives, in particular the EC communication on A Clean Planet for All - A European strategic long-term vision for a prosperous, moderns, competitive and climate neutral economy.

This project addressed the data gap problem in relation to how best to support innovation on the new trends of Mobility. In particular, for security of supply and responsible production and consumption of minor metals required for the implementation of modern transport systems via electric vehicles.

This Trinity-led project was a collaboration between 11 EIT RawMaterials partners.

For more information, please contact Damaris Fernandez at dfernan@tcd.ie, or visit https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/winsmartrm/

The Raw MatTERS Ambassadors at Schools (RM@Schools), an active learning project, has achieved success and recognition by involving experts from EIT RawMaterials to engage students in experiments, and efforts to disseminate the results of those experiments.

The Raw MatTERS Ambassadors at Schools (RM@Schools), an active learning project, has achieved success and recognition by involving experts from EIT RawMaterials to engage students in experiments, and efforts to disseminate the results of those experiments. RM@Schools, led by CNR, Italy, is a well-established programme that sees 10-19-year-old students conduct experiments with Raw-Materials-related hands-on educational kits, produced by EIT RawMaterials partners. The project started in 2016 and continues to date under the umbrella of Raw Material Academy.

A multi-disciplinary team from Trinity's School of Education, School of Geology and the AMBER SFI research centre collaborated with the RM@Schools consortium to create a teacher handbook to support the sustainability and scalability of this highly acclaimed programme.

For more information on the RM@Schools programme, visit https://rmschools.isof.cnr.it/ . For more information on the RM@Schools handbook, contact Penny Humby at humbyp@tcd.ie.