Vedanta Ltd, India’s largest diversified natural resources company, is creating a new web-based platform, ‘Eureka’, to nurture and incubate in-house innovation and technology. ‘Eureka’ is expected to go live on May 30, 2016. The platform is part of Vedanta’s Innovation & Technology program, which has been created with INR200 crore in capital to fund in-house research and development opportunities.
Headed by Ajay Kumar Dixit, CEO, Power at Vedanta Ltd, the Innovation and Technology program is currently evaluating some of the most exciting prospects in the fields of mining, exploration, and production. For instance, MAGMA, a new technology that allows conversion of red mud into pig iron is being evaluated. If successful, MAGMA would be instrumental in protecting the mining area from being filled with red mud and in turn be used for more productive purposes.
“Innovation is crucial to business success and sustainability in the natural resources industry. From assessing mineral deposits, facilitating cost management, ensuring worker safety, addressing environmental imperatives, innovative practices hold the key to value creation. We recognize the power of ideas in driving innovation and believe crowd sourcing them through a common engagement platform is the most effective and efficient path to scale. I am confident that ‘Eureka’ will be the foundation of Vedanta’s lead in innovation & technology in the years to come”, said Dixit.
Apart from MAGMA, Vedanta is also assessing the viability of recovering zinc and lead from slag, which is generated during the smelting of zinc. The Black Mountain Mining (BMM) project in South Africa has submitted a technology named REFLEX, which facilitates the effective survey of mines.
Developing processes to reduce water consumption, converting fly ash into geo-polymer cement, and cutting down on paper consumption are some of the other areas that are being developed to enhance sustainability.
Vedanta Ltd is a diversified natural resources company, whose business primarily involves producing oil & gas, zinc/lead/silver, copper, iron ore, aluminium and commercial power. The company has a presence across India, South Africa, Namibia, Australia and Ireland.