Implementation period: 2018-05-01 - 2021-04-30
Type: International
Division: The Division of Strategic Research
“Integrated eco-technology for a selective recovery of base and precious metals in Cu and Pb mining by-products” (MINTECO) project, reference no ERA-MIN-2017_119, is co-financed by The National Center for Research and Development within ERA-MIN 2 program.
The MINTECO project aims to develop an integrated innovative, efficient and ecological global technology for the recovery of base (Cu, Pb, Zn) and precious (Au, Ag) metals from copper and lead bearing mining waste (CLMB) and to promote more consistent methods for managing these wastes generated from dumps sites and tailings.
The project will allow establishing a global management methodology to treat historical mining sites and reduce disposed volumes of metal-bearing waste. Lab scale experiments (TRL< 4), on well-known representative samples, will first allow establishing optimized protocols to concentrate the metals in smaller fractions by innovative mineral processing and recover the metals by hydrometallurgy techniques. The main steps (pre-concentration/ leaching/ high grade metal recovery) will be studied in details by research institutes to optimize first relevant process sequences. Then, a global coherent flowsheet will be proposed and the developed technologies will be further validated by the industrial partners (SMEs) at TR>4. Final economic and environmental assessment will be performed.
The consortium gathers eight partners from four countries (France, Romania, Poland and Turkey) with complementary expertise. It is composed of a University (Turkey), three research institutes (Romania, Poland), a public institution (France) as well as three small and medium companies (France, Romania, Poland).
