Tag Archives: Dr Nadia Mykytczuk

Vale partners with MIRARCO on bioleaching, bioremediation processing project

Vale Energy Transition Metals, a leading global supplier of nickel, copper, cobalt and platinum group metals, says it is moving to accelerate commercial recovery of critical minerals from mine waste in partnership with the Mining Innovation, Rehabilitation, and Applied Research
Corporation (MIRARCO) at Laurentian University, in Canada.

As part of efforts to reduce mine waste and capture additional value from mined material, Vale has committed C$875,000 ($635,769) over five years to MIRARCO to support a new industrial research chair program in biomining and bioremediation. The announcement was made during the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada 2023 Convention, in Toronto, Canada.

The industrial research chair program, led by Dr Nadia Mykytczuk (pictured in the centre), will develop, pilot and work towards commercialising bioleaching and bioremediation processes including efforts to recover nickel and cobalt from low-grade pyrrhotite tailings and other waste.

Luke Mahony, Chief Technical Officer at Vale Energy Transition Metals (pictured second from left), said: “This builds on our extensive R&D history and proven track record of lab-to-plant process development and represents a significant opportunity for waste-stream reprocessing here in Ontario. We see this as a triple-win, with potential to reduce liabilities, accelerate commercial recovery of critical minerals and capture additional value from mined material.”

The Government of Ontario will also contribute C$750,000 through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. to support this industrial research chair program.

Greg Rickford, Minister of Northern Development (pictured second from right), said: “The new and improved Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation is supporting innovative solutions in the resource extraction sector that will change the way we see mining traditionally. By partnering with Vale and Laurentian University, we are committing to Made in Ontario solutions that will reduce mine waste and enhance value for materials already involved in the mining process.”

Dr Mykytczuk, President and CEO of MIRARCO, said: “This funding and collaboration will accelerate the development of new tools to help us extract value from wastes, producing the metals we need in an environmentally sustainable way.”

Vale Energy Transition Metals is one of the world’s largest producers of high-quality nickel and an important producer of copper and responsibly sourced cobalt. With headquarters in Toronto, Canada, and operations in Newfoundland & Labrador, Ontario, Manitoba, Indonesia and Brazil, the business delivers critical building blocks for a cleaner, greener future.

MIRARCO Mining Innovation is in its 25th year and has been a leader in the development of innovative solutions in response to the needs of the mining industry. Located in Sudbury, Ontario, MIRARCO works collaboratively with industry, private sector, government, academia, and community stakeholders, building fit for purpose teams to effectively deploy knowledge, technology, and sustainable practices across the mining life cycle.

RPMGlobal and MIRARCO’s AVM, VCM software to receive funding boost

RPMGlobal has announced an increase in funding for its optimisation software development program after receiving industry funds to further support the ongoing development of its decision support software for underground mining.

The support has been given by the government of Ontario through the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI), an organisation that supports innovators to commercialise new Ontario based technologies. RPM acquired three optimisation software modules in December 2021 from Sudbury-based MIRARCO as part of a three-year collaborative research partnership. MIRARCO is a solution research provider for the mining industry and research arm of Laurentian University.

David Batkin, RPMGlobal’s Head of Product Strategy, said it was terrific to be working with forward thinking, likeminded organisations.

“RPM and MIRARCO have had a great working relationship for the past few years, and it is fantastic to be enjoying this additional support from OCI; it will go a long way to further develop these important optimisation programs,” he said.

MIRARCO President and CEO, Dr Nadia Mykytczuk, added: “This collaboration with RPMGlobal will result in full commercialisation and deployment of tools that will benefit the mining industry. We are really excited to have our teams working together as well as bringing together new academic collaborators from Queen’s University.”

The software modules benefitting from the investment are part of RPM’s Design and Scheduling product portfolio. These modules consist of the Advanced Valuation Module (AVM) and the Ventilation Constraint Module (VCM), both of which extend and complement the functionality of RPM’s mine optimisation software solutions.

The AVM facilitates the generation of optimised underground mine plans that are robust to uncertain product prices and ore grades. The VCM generates optimised underground mine schedules based on ventilation constraints.

The funding provided by OCI, which has a proven track record when it comes to supporting software development, RPM says, will be matched by RPM and will be used to support the multi-year collaboration arrangement between RPM and MIRARCO.

Batkin concluded: “We are very thankful to OCI for this support and for having the foresight and vision to recognise the value that this technology will bring to the underground mining industry.”

BacTech Environmental building up to bioleaching pilot plant milestone

BacTech Environmental Corp, an environmental technology company delivering eco-friendly bioleaching and remediation solutions for precious metal and critical mineral recovery, says it is advancing its Sudbury pilot plant development for nickel-cobalt and ‘green’ iron recovery with plans for the plant to be operational in July.

Dr Nadia Mykytczuk, a leader in biomining technology, member of BacTech’s advisory board and Interim CEO and President of MIRARCO Mining Innovation, is leading the development and building of a bioleach pilot plant to be located in Sudbury, Canada.

Working closely with BacTech’s scientific team, the plant is for the testing of bioleaching processes like the company’s proposed approach for pyrrhotite treatment. The pilot plant will simulate a commercial bioleach process consisting of a cascade of reactors operating on a continuous basis. The plant will also include front and back-end equipment operating as separate units for capturing additional revenue sources beyond nickel-cobalt (eg elemental sulphur, iron as feed for steel making and oxidised residue conversion for construction materials).

The proposed pilot plant is expected to be operational by July. One reactor has been 100% completed to date and is being used to test select concentrates from BacTech’s Tenguel project in Ecuador.

On April 7, BacTech announced it had filed a provisional patent application documenting its proposed approach to bioleaching pyrrhotite materials. Pyrrhotite is a very volatile sulphide mineral containing nickel and cobalt values that oxidises rapidly and produces large amounts of iron and sulphur components as by-products, which are typically considered as wastes. The pilot plant is part of Dr Mykytczuk’s larger effort to establish the future Centre for Mine Waste Biotechnology, a facility focused on scale-up and commercialisation of biotechnologies to help extract value and reduce impacts from mine wastes.

The object is to use this pilot facility to obtain the design data necessary to establish a fully integrated tonnage-based demonstration plant, which would then lead towards full-scale commercialisation. The production of value-added materials from the iron and sulphur and oxidised residue, which would normally be disposed of as waste, differentiates this process from other pyrrhotite bioleach endeavours which only target nickel and cobalt production, BacTech says.

On May 11, 2022, the Canadian government announced a C$10.9 million ($8.5 million) fund to assist with the construction of pilot plants and projects to support the development of critical mineral value chains. The Sudbury Basin hosts up to 100 Mt of pyrrhotite tailings deposited over the past 90 years of mining estimated to contain on average 0.8% Ni and 0.03% Co, according to BacTech.

“We are very happy to see the government stepping up and providing capital for pilot stage plants in the critical metals space,” Ross Orr, President and CEO of BacTech, said. “This is probably the most difficult capital to obtain at the R&D stage, as the demands are much greater than a typical lab setup. We will definitely be answering the Canadian Government’s call for proposals. In addition to reactors and other equipment, we need to conduct studies on the pre- bioleach phase as well as recovery of metals from solution at the back-end.”

BacTech’s scientific path is to develop an innovative zero-carbon liberation and extraction approach to separating iron from its ore, in addition to optimising nickel-cobalt recovery efforts. BacTech says it believes its method answers the need raised by the Canadian Government and to accelerate the sustainable extraction and processing of critical minerals from existing mine tailings and invest in domestic production.

Orr concluded: “Providing the solution to the complex pyrrhotite issue in the Sudbury Basin would be a tremendous win for BacTech and its shareholders. Having completed an applicable year-long bioleach study with great results some 20 years ago gives us the confidence that we can succeed. The complementary technologies that we hope to now use were not available to us back in the late 1990s and should allow us to commercialise and sell multiple end-products derived from the pyrrhotite source.”