Transforming mining residues to valuable products

Purpose and goal

The residue2product project addresses the challenge stated in the STRIM agenda under mining, recycling and metallurgy sections “Resource efficient production” with the objective of utilizing waste materials across business sectors, to reach by 2030. The project aim is to develop and validate a novel recycling process for simultaneous treatment of gypsum and pyrite residues. The project at the same time leads to production of valuable products, such as CaO and SO2 and Fe, through which the project generates additional commodity from mining residues.

Expected results and effects

The result from this pre-study will strengthen the Swedish mining and metallurgical industry, by providing improved management of the mining residues. The results are not constrained to Swedish mining industry but can be implemented in any extraction of base metals from sulphidic ore. The proposed pre-study will ensure mining sustainability, decrease the environmental burden from the generated wastes, reduce the generated CO2 from conventional recycling method of gypsum and add an economic value by converting residues to products.

Planned approach and implementation

The planned work is divided into four interconnected work-packages; WP 1) Coordinating and project management; WP2) Theoretical exploration wherein the available literature data will be reported and thermodynamic calculations will be conducted; WP3) Sampling and validation wherein Boliden will collect and prepare samples of gypsum and pyrite; and WP4) Upscaling and evaluation. The results from this pre-study will be basis for a future full-scale project, which would eventually lead to a pilot or demo-scale process.