The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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Canadian tech company EnviCore and nickel mining company Talon Metals are teaming up to pioneer a "full value mining" technology that converts mine waste into products for the building, construction, and infrastructure industries. This new technology has the potential to transform waste from nickel mining – called tailings – into additional products with added value for stakeholders. The resulting byproduct would replace primary raw materials in legacy cement and concrete prod...
University of Texas scientists develop CO2-injection tech that breaks rocks and stores carbon. University of Texas at Austin researchers may have made a literal groundbreaking discovery for mining the nickel and cobalt needed for electric vehicle batteries – storing more carbon dioxide than is needed to produce these lithium-ion battery metals while also using the CO2 as a rock conditioner that makes the mining and processing less energy intensive. Many nickel-cobalt d...
Installing fuel cells in more than 400 mining trucks for Anglo American. Only two months after a $1.5 billion transaction that transformed First Mode from a Seattle-based space mission engineering startup into a clean-energy subsidiary of global mining company Anglo American, the clean-energy firm is already busy retrofitting massive mining trucks with hydrogen fuel cells produced by Ballard Power Systems. Given First Mode's rapid ascent in the clean energy space, it is...
Economical Energy intends to mine cavities to house renewable energy storage systems. An Australian startup has come up with an idea for energy storage mining that does not involve the production of lithium, cobalt, nickel, or any of the battery minerals and metals that have captured headline news over the past couple of years. Instead, Economical Energy proposes mining out a cavity that will house an innovative underground energy storage system that will keep the power on...
As the demand for critical metals continues to rise, the need for efficient and accurate mineral exploration has never been greater. With the mining industry facing ever-increasing pressure to reduce the time from discovery to mineral extraction, Boart Longyear Group Ltd., a company well-known for its mineral exploration expertise, has repackaged its award-winning geological data services into a standalone entity – Veracio. Established over 130 years ago, Boart Longyear has w...
Under the lead of a doctoral aerospace engineering student at Missouri University of Science and Technology, a team of 12 undergraduates have come together to continue research on a project that is out of this world. In the fall of 2022, NASA announced its eighth annual Breakthrough, Innovation, and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge. You can read about the initial announcement of NASA's challenge at Latest NASA challenge tackles Moon forging in the August 17, 2022 edition of...
ExynAero drone improves safety and efficiency at underground gold mines in Brazil. Toward its commitment to embracing new mining technologies that increase safety and efficiency, Jaguar Mining Inc. has adopted Exyn Technologies Inc.'s autonomous drones to capture critical data at its underground gold mines in Brazil. "We are thrilled to deliver innovations that help reduce risk to humans and increase efficiency and productivity in mining operations," said Exyn Technologies...
Starting this year, Swedish mining group Boliden will begin incorporating heavy battery-electric trucks into its underground transport fleet, beginning with two vehicles from Volvo Trucks. Diesel engines are a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions and hydrocarbons in underground mines – this poses a safety challenge that must be managed to ensure the health of below-ground miners. Diesel exhaust also increases the carbon footprint of mining companies seeking to r...
It is not miner's faces that will be recognized by the new technology being deployed by Hecla Mining Company. Instead, Mine Vision Systems' FaceCapture system will be used to map the mine face at two of the company's underground operations in North America. First introduced at the MINExpo 2021, MVS's FaceCapture technology quickly and accurately captures detailed and dense images of underground mine faces that are georeferenced to laser-based surveys to generate reliable 3D...
American motor and power tech leader Cummins and Japanese construction and mining equipment brand Komatsu are continuing their history of innovative collaboration with a streamlined remote monitoring system that can accurately predict mining equipment maintenance needs. Together, these companies share a drive towards carbon neutrality as well as a long history in the global mining space and strong technical capabilities ideal for co-developing better solutions to the industry'...
In Norway, the Rana Gruber iron ore mining and mineral processing operation has purchased a fleet of 19 battery-electric vehicles from Sandvik. The order is being filled during this year's first quarter through 2024 and is Sandvik's second-largest battery-electric mining fleet sale to date. Valued at 370 million Swedish kronor (US$35.5 million), the Rana Gruber order includes eight drills, six trucks, and five loaders, along with on-site support and batteries for the fleet....
Like flying cars and jet packs, space travel, colonization and resource mining are all lagging behind the imaginations of Hollywood, scientists, and billionaire CEOs. This is partly because NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (and any other nation's government-supported agencies) have a problem – the project ambitions of the U.S. Congress-funded space agency is hedged by the variable length of a presidential term and the resulting appointments. Therefore, it is up to the p...
The last few years have seen big industries' social accountability come to the fore, with growing pressure to engage more holistically with the workforce, local communities, and environmental concerns. Evolving from this, a new business model of corporate performance has arrived in boardrooms, comprising a trifecta of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) responsibilities. Keeping pace is the mining industry's collective push to be more sustainable and accountable,...
Swedish researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology have developed a recovery method for recycling 100% of the silver and about 85% of the indium contained in thin-film solar cells in an environmentally friendly, room temperature process. "The problem is that the demand for indium and silver is high, and increased production is accompanied by a growing amount of production waste, which contains a mixture of valuable metals and hazardous substances," the scientists...
Foreseeing a green technologies hub emerging in the southeastern regions of Canada, Geomega Resources Inc. is centralizing all its operations into a single larger location within the town of Saint-Hubert, Quebec. This Quebec locale harkens back to Geomega's roots, as the critical metals recycling and extraction company originally began developing its innovative technologies while seeking a means to recover rare earths from its Montveil deposit in Quebec. The company, however,...
To build electric mining equipment with potential to offer clean energy benefits that will ripple far beyond the mining sector. Building off a collaboration that was first forged in 2021, Caterpillar Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to supply Nouveau Monde Graphite Inc. with electric mining equipment that will lower the carbon footprint of producing the graphite critical to lithium batteries. In turn, the junior mining company will supply the global heavy...
Similar to some International Space Station experiments for mining in space, the University of Waterloo in Southern Ontario has been using microorganisms as an environmentally friendly means of breaking down tailings here on Earth, reclaiming critical resources and cleaning up the leftovers of yesteryear at the same time. A common byproduct of mining, tailings are typically fine-grained waste material left after extracting a target ore mineral. Stored in various media such as...
In a surprising move, automotive multinational Stellantis has announced the acquisition of a 14.2% equity stake in McEwen Copper, a subsidiary of McEwen Mining, becoming the Canadian company's second-largest shareholder. This is an insightful move in Stellantis' sweeping decarbonization plan, placing the company over an aspect of its own strategic metal production as well as complementing its commitment to becoming a sustainable mobility tech provider. The industry leader's...
While not quite as easy as whipping up a science experiment in the kitchen, a research group from the Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Engineering has developed an inexpensive and eco-friendly way to condense various rare earth elements (REEs) from natural water sources using common, food-safe ingredients. The research group, led by Professor Masayuki Azuma and Associate Professor Yoshihiro Ojima, have successfully tested an adsorbent material using dry...
Epiroc, a leading Swedish equipment and tech innovator for the mining and infrastructure industries, has partnered up with Japanese automation and AI startup iSpace and its Luxembourg-based subsidiary iSpace EU in a long-term collaboration agreement for developing commercial Moon missions. International space agencies' attentions have been focused on the principal chemical elements of the lunar surface that would provide for self-sustaining lunar habitation and the mining of...
Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed last year, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) announced it is allocating $450 million in grants to repurpose 1.5 million acres of current and former coal mining sites as green energy projects. "We share a belief, which is that the workers who powered the last century of industry and innovation can power the next one. They have the infrastructure, they have the expertise, they got the...
Foreseeing the importance of a presence in space, the Minister for Industry and Science, Australian parliament member Ed Husic, along with dignitaries from the Australian Space Agency and NASA, announced the EPE and Lunar Outpost Oceania consortium as one of two successful groups to receive stage-one funding under Australia's Moon to Mars Trailblazer Initiative. The Trailblazer program was launched in late 2021 as part of the Moon to Mars Initiative, which seeks to progress...
Global electrification of an extensive amount of industrial processes necessitates a counterbalance to the wave of new mining required for the electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure to meet carbon neutrality imperatives without doing further damage to the environment or simply displacing problems to other areas of the value stream. Technologies for capturing carbon dioxide are improving, but the captured CO2 still needs a rock-solid alternative to expensive...
Since starting electric heavy truck production in 2019, Volvo has swiftly become a leader in the market with a running tally of 4,300 vehicles on the road in over 38 countries, including nearly half of all heavy electric trucks registered in North America last year. Additionally, the demand for zero-emission trucks over 16 tons has increased by 200% in Europe just in the last year, and Volvo Trucks holds the highest share of that market. Volvo currently offers the...
Geothermal power has generally represented region-specific and niche clean energy in the public consciousness for over a century. Today, thanks to a profusion of social outreach and government incentives, investors and leaders across both public and private sectors are exploring lesser-known applications and exciting advancements in the field. Just a few feet below the surface, the earth maintains a near-constant temperature that belies the seasonal extremes of aboveground...
