Current Research Projects
Current research projects at BART are:
The ProMine Project (promine.gtk.fi)
Nano-particle products from new mineral resources in Europe
The non-energy extractive industry (NEEI) is a significant contributor to the economy of the EU providing metalliferous and non-metalliferous mineral resources to the society as well as direct and indirect employment. The philosophy behind ProMine is to stimulate the extractive industry to deliver new products to manufacturing industry. ProMine will kick-start a process of renewal whose momentum will carry over into the coming decennia.
Main objectives of the project:
- To develop the first pan-European GIS-based database containing the known and predicted metalliferous and non-metalliferous resources, which together define the strategic reserves (including secondary resources) of the EU.
- To calculate the volumes of potentially strategic metals (e.g. cobalt, niobium, vanadium, antimony, platinum group elements and REE) and minerals that are currently not extracted in Europe.
- To develop five new, high value, mineral-based (nano) products.
- To enlarge the number of profitable potential targets in Europe.
- To establish a new, cross-platform information group between the European Technology Platform on Sustainable Mineral Resources (ETP-SMR) and other platforms.
BART’s activities in ProMine include investigating the formation of schwertmannite as a by-product of mine water bioremediation (with GEOS, Freiberg, Germany) and working with colleagues at BRGM (Orleans, France) on aspects of mineral bioprocessing.
Participants from BART include Barrie Johnson, Barry Grail and Sabrina Hedrich.