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ReOre Technologies, an Altilium group company focused on recovery of critical minerals from mining waste, has announced that it will lead a new government-backed project that seeks to unlock domestic supplies of nickel, cobalt and copper, helping the UK to reduce its reliance on imported critical materials and supporting the development of a sovereign battery materials supply chain.
The two-year CASCADE project, which brings together ReOre with Aberdeen Minerals and Camborne School of Mines, has secured grant funding of £1.4 million ($1.83 million) through the UK government’s Battery Innovation Programme, delivered by Innovate UK and supported by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade.
Leveraging ReOre’s patent-pending EcoMineral查看配图：™ technology, an innovative hydrometallurgical process that uses a biodegradable, non-toxic chemistry, the project will focus on the sustainable recovery of nickel, cobalt and copper contained in sulphide mineral concentrates extracted from Aberdeen Minerals’ Arthrath nickel-copper-cobalt project in Aberdeenshire, which contains the UK’s largest-scale nickel prospect.
While the UK has untapped domestic nickel and cobalt prospects, it currently has no primary extraction of these critical materials and lacks the processing capability needed to turn them into products suitable for the battery supply chain. This leaves strategically important industries, such as the automotive sector, advanced manufacturing and defence, dependent on imported raw materials and overseas processing.
Aberdeen Minerals is a leading explorer for nickel and cobalt in the UK and has already carried out successful drilling and geophysics programs confirming the potential for high value deposits in northeast Scotland, it says. CASCADE seeks to build on this work by demonstrating a low-cost and environmentally compatible processing route for the eventual extraction and refinement of these critical minerals, transforming them into high-value products suitable for direct supply to UK industry.
Research partner Camborne School of Mines, a world-class combined geoscience and mining school, will provide expertise in innovative mineral processing to develop sustainable recovery routes for nickel and cobalt, and investigate UK mine waste and other secondary feedstocks as additional sources of battery metals.
ReOre’s EcoMineral process is designed to recover critical metals from challenging feedstocks using a biodegradable, non-toxic chemistry. The process operates at ambient pressure and low temperatures, avoiding the aggressive conditions associated with many conventional extraction technologies and offering the potential for lower energy consumption, environmental impact and processing costs, ReOre claims. The chemistry is also capable of processing a variety of feedstocks, including end-of-life products and mine waste.
Altilium will play a key role in validating the nickel and cobalt products recovered through the EcoMineral process, assessing their suitability for use in the UK battery materials supply chain.
Successful delivery of the project will establish a clear pathway for phased scale-up of the process from laboratory to pilot, as well as support development options for integrated nickel, cobalt and copper production in Aberdeenshire.
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