Hydromet Projects
Ongoing projects:
BATCircle
The main objective of BATCircle consortium led by Aalto University is to generate added value to sectors manufacturing battery metals and chemicals, as well as their circular economy. According to the EU, the battery market’s value may increase to 250 billion euros by 2025. The objective of BATCircle consortium is to create a market worth at least five billion euros in Finland. A particularly large amount of unused potential can be found in the recycling of batteries. The BATCircle consortium aims at improving the manufacturing processes of mining industry, metals industry and battery chemicals, and to increase the recycling of lithium-ion batteries. Its goal is to strengthen the cooperation between companies and research organisations, and to find new business opportunities. The consortium consists of four universities, two research organisations and 22 companies.
BioPolyMet
The research of BioPolyMet combines two of Finland’s main industrial sectors – Forestry (forest derived products) and the Metal industry by exploring the use of cellulosic based materials as new type of sustainable metal coating. This coating can result in improved hydrophobic or hydrophilic surface layers, improved printability, a replacement of Teflon as non-fingerprint coating, a replacement of PVC as wear resistant coating, esthetical new surfaces and increased bio content in the coatings to mention just a few. Emphasis is placed on an in depth understanding of the proposed materials under electrophoretic coating conditions that will allow for rapid upscaling and early industrial adoption. Work will be carried out on this project as a joint collaboration between Mari Lundström's research group of Hydrometallurgy and Corrosion and Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems (Prof. Herbert Sixta).
KYT
The topic of research for KYT project is on the corrosion of nuclear waste capsules in oxygen-free ground water.
NoWaste
The goal of the project is to efficiently recover precious metals from low quality waste solutions and produce high quality functional surfaces from these waste streams.
Past projects:
The project aimed to develop efficient ways of gold leaching in cyanide free chloride solutions.
The aim of the project was to boost the understanding of circular economy and material loops to enable development of material and process technologies regarding secondary raw material.
Circular Metal Ecosystem (CMEco) was a project bringing together Finnish industrial and academic partners in order to research the recovery of metals from different types of secondary raw materials. The project aimed to reveled recovery of metals from metallurgical process related solids, such as leach residues, anode slimes and slags. Additionally, new mechanical, hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical methods were developed and existing processes were optimized in order to recover valuable, base and critical and metals from secondary raw materials such as Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and incineration plant residues like waste incineration bottom ash (IBA), thus bringing new circular economy business to Finland. The ultimate goal of the project was to develop new CleanTech and Circular economy business to Finland with improved metals recovery and impurity removal from process related solids such as leach residues, anode slimes, crud and slag, containing metals.
Interest in the recycling of NdFeB permanent magnets is increasing due to the need to recycle critical elements. The EU has classified neodymium and other rare earth elements as critical due to their high supply risk and economic significance in tech applications. Thus, this project was focused on selective recovery of select rare earths by hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical means.
Producing cellulosic textile fibers from dissolving pulp in an environmentally friendly process.
The project was focused on processing of jarosite ores and precious metal recovery from leaching waste.
The project focused on the recovery of critical elements from electronic waste streams, including raw materials and the final product. Currently, only 1 % of critical elements in EU are recycled and this number must go up to ensure availability of critical raw material for industries.
METSEK project aimed to develop efficient methods of hydrometallurgical metal recovery from secondary sources.
The project was funded by European Institute of Innovation & Technology to develop business and technical synergy between European raw materials producers.
This project focuses on cyanide-free gold leaching processes. Experimental research, process modelling, life-cycle analysis, and artificial intelligence are combined to produce new information about the environmental impacts of alternative gold production methods.
The project aimed to increase recovery of metals from waste electronic equipment.
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