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CMIC’s CanMicro technology wins top prize in Crush It! Challenge

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The Canada Mining Innovation Council’s cleantech solution, CanMicro, has been named as the grand prize winner of the Crush It! Challenge, being awarded a C$5 million ($3.9 million) grant to further develop the solution.

CanMicro combines microwave-assisted comminution and multi-sensor ore sorting technology to selectively break particles and sort waste from desired minerals, reducing crushing and grinding requirements. CMIC says the CanMicro technology can provide over 35% energy savings across several commodities.

The Crush It! Challenge was announced in October 2018 by Natural Resources Canada (NRC) with the aim to realise an innovative breakthrough in the mining industry’s most energy-intensive and inefficient processes: crushing and grinding.

The primary objectives of the challenge are to fight climate change by creating innovative technologies that reduce energy consumption and pollution, increase competitiveness by developing world-leading clean technologies, and transform the mining cycle to establish a new “future in mining”.

Semi-finalists (up to 12) received C$10,000 to help them pitch their ideas to the Challenge Jury, with up to six finalists being granted up to C$860,000 to build and test their clean technologies. The winner and innovator demonstrating the most superior energy breakthrough to crush and grind rocks was awarded a C$5 million prize to fully develop and roll out their solution.

The grand prize winner of the Crush it! Challenge was selected through a competitive and rigorous process designed and delivered by NRC.

Crush It! is one of six initial clean technology challenges led by NRC under the Impact Canada Initiative – a government-wide approach to introduce innovative approaches to help solve Canada’s biggest economic, environmental and social challenges. NRCan invested C$75 million in its cleantech challenges: Crush It! Challenge, Charging the Future Challenge, Indigenous Off-diesel Initiative, Power Forward Challenge, Women in Cleantech Challenge and The Sky’s the Limit Challenge.

CanMicro is the only technology to combine microwave-assisted comminution and sorting, according to CMIC. The treatment selectively heats value minerals, resulting in micro-fractures along grain boundaries that help reduce ore competency and increase mineral liberation after grinding. It also generates a thermal signature that can be used to sort ore particles so that only those containing value minerals are subjected to fine grinding.

Aside from the potential energy savings, which the team – made up of CMIC (Project Administrator), Dr Erin Bobicki (Technical Lead), Sepro Mineral Systems (Project Participants), Glencore Canada (Project Participants), COREM (Project Participants) and Queens University (Subject Matter Experts) – believe could be up to 70%, this has significant environmental implications for tailings.

OZ Minerals invests in seven hydrogen experiments as part of Hydrogen Hypothesis challenge

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As part of the Hydrogen Hypothesis challenge, seven teams have been selected to take part in the OZ Minerals’ Think & Act Differently (TAD) accelerator program.

The focus of the challenge, launched at the end of March, was to identify experiments that can demonstrate the safe and effective use of hydrogen in a mining context, with the aim of providing OZ Minerals insight into how hydrogen can be used to support zero or low carbon processes.

It was underlined by the miner’s strategic aspiration to eliminate Scope 1 emissions and strive to systematically reduce Scope 2 and 3 emissions across its value chain.

There were 158 participants in the OZ Minerals and Unearthed Hydrogen Hypothesis challenge, from 35 countries.

Brett Triffett, OZ Minerals’ Transformation Technologist, said: “The mining sector has the opportunity to leverage the progress made in other sectors and explore the use of hydrogen technology in its operations.

“The finalist teams were chosen because they have proposed ideas that have the potential to demonstrate the value hydrogen technologies and applications could create for our industry.

“These teams also demonstrated their willingness to work and learn together with each other and OZ Minerals. The OZ Minerals TAD incubator acceleration program is designed to create as much mutual value as we possibly can, rather than just transacting an experiment for funding.”

The program, according to Triffett, includes frequent capability uplift sessions on a range of topics so participants come out with something more than just a funded experiment.

“Many of the finalist teams are not from the mining industry and are keen to learn more about how the industry works,” he added.

These insights are embedded through regular insights panels with members of OZ Minerals’ broad ecosystem. They also come together with a technical mentor to gain valuable feedback on the technical aspects of their work with one another.

The teams selected are

  • Avid Group (Aaron Teo) – Hydrogen powered lighting towers;
  • Carbon 280 (Mark Rheinlander) – Hydrilyte storage system – safe hydrogen transport and storage at atmospheric temperature and pressure;
  • Carnot (Francis Lempp) – Ultra efficient ceramic engine;
  • Fly H2 Aerospace (Mark Van Wyk) – Hydrogen-powered drone;
  • OZ Minerals (Steve Day) – Hydrogen highway;
  • Supercritical (Luke Tan) – High pressure electrolyser; and
  • Yakum Consulting/Queens University (Yeonuk Choi) – Produce clean metal products from concentrate using green hydrogen.