ION4RAW
Iono-metallurgy of primary sources for an enhanced raw materials recovery
| Business | Period | Project Coordinator | Funding Scheme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industry | June 2019 -May 2023 | OPTIMIZACION ORIENTADA A LA SOSTENIBILIDAD SL |
H2020 |
Challenge
Critical Raw Materials are crucial to Europe’s economy. Embedded within everyday modern appliances and goods, innovative strategies that could increase the reliability of their supply are of high interest to the European Union.
The Horizon 2020-funded project, ION4RAW proposes an energy-, material- and cost-efficient new mineral processing technology to recover by-products from primary sources by means of innovative Deep Eutectic Solvent (DES) ionic liquids and advanced electro-recovery as an only step.
Joint recovery of by-products from primary sources which belong to the Cu-Ag-Au group is proposed. Most of the targeted by-products elements are Critical Raw Materials such as bismuth (Bi), germanium (Ge), indium (In), cobalt (Co), platinum (Pt) and antimony (Sb), as well as accompanying major product metals, e.g. copper (Cu), silver (Ag) and gold (Au), that could be recovered by this process.
The ION4RAW project has a very promising business potential since it will allow mining and mineral processing companies to fully exploit by-product potential by recovering them at their own facilities. This will contribute to unlocking the full potential of Europe’s inner wealth by converting new and currently unexploited resources into reserves.
Approach
RINA is leading both the quality assessment activities and the legal compliance assessment.
Under the quality assessment activities, both products and by-products will be characterized in order to provide information in terms of their purity (quantifying the presence of undesirable pollutants) and morphological/ mineralogical composition. This characterization will allow a preliminary economic analysis of possible uses of the process products in each identified application.
The characterisation will be accomplished by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, X-ray diffraction technique, electron-microscopy tests and acid dissolution of the sample followed by plasma emission spectrometry.
The legal compliance assessment will identify all potential legal requirements appliable to the processes and chemicals being developed with the project. Ranking them in terms of exploitation risk to support both the development of the technology and the overall exploitation plan.
In addition, to the above-mentioned tasks RINA will also perform the economical assessment, sensitivity analysis, and standardization prioritization.
Conclusion
The ambition of the ION4RAW project is to develop a protype of the system, bring the development TRL5 (and thus, closer to the market) the ionometallurgical concept to increase the recovery of by-products from primary sources, providing an advance with respect to current commercially established production routes and giving mining and mineral processing companies the possibility of recovering by-products at their own facilities.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 815748.
