News
GREENPEG coordinator Axel Müller met The QuartzCorp (TQC) management including Thomas Guillaume (CEO), Benny Hallam (VP), Robert Kvamme, Christian Hadley and Oscar Nijs at Drag in northern Norway, to discuss the latest developments of pegmatite-deposit-adjusted exploration tools and preliminary exploration results related to the Tysfjord GREENPEG demonstration site. TQC is one of the major stakeholders of the GREENPEG project.
Among the discussed topics was the chemical quartz quality of Tysfjord pegmatites. Regional quartz chemistry mapping in the frame of GREENPEG revealed that the quartz chemistry of Tysfjord pegmatites is surprisingly consistent regionally being of very high chemical quality. These results increased the total volume of inferred quartz resources. Since spring 2022, TQC is upscaling mining at the Håkonhals pegmatite mine due to strong increasing demands of the specific quartz quality of the Tysfjord pegmatites. Thus, the news about increased resources was highly appreciated by TQC.
At the same day, QC organized the annual “dugnadsdag” (volunteer day) to support the Drag community by improving the village’s public facilities. This year, about 30 TQC employees together with other volunteers from Drag painted the kindergarten, fixed the lights of the village’s football field, repaired hiking tracks, among other things. This annual TQC volunteer day is very much appreciated by the local community because results can be seen immediately and increases the public acceptance of TQC.
The 2022 Living Planet Symposium organised by European Space Agency (ESA) took place on 23–27 May 2022 in Bonn, Germany with record-breaking numbers of more than 5000 participants. The event joined representatives from space agencies and international organisations and corporations, business and enterprise leaders, and world-class scientists from across the world. They have all come together to discuss how Earth observation can contribute to science and society, namely its role in advancing the comprehension of our planet and how it is being affected by climate change. With 240 science sessions, the symposium covered distinct thematic areas from Earth’s core, cryosphere, land and atmosphere.
The GREENPEG project participated with a Poster Presentation on Wednesday, the dedicated Climate Day, showing how the project results are essential for sustainable natural resources and energy, namely for the exploration of LCT pegmatites that are considered a major source of critical raw materials for the energy transition. Moreover, the work presented by the GREENPEG team, entitled “Exploiting Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data for province scale exploration: the GREENPEG project case studies”, highlighted the collaboration and integration of different instruments, namely between the Copernicus Sentinel Series. The work was very well received by either geoscientists or by data analysts and software developers, all recognizing the importance of the use of satellites as a non-invasive tool of the exploration chain.
The part of the IFU GmbH within the GREENPEG project is the geophysical surveying and drone-based data acquisition. In the first period of the project, IFU focused on developing, setting up and testing the hardware for ground-and drone-based hyperspectral data acquisition. This includes the heavy-duty drone system and the acousto-optical monochromator for hyperspectral imaging. See video of drone-base data acquisition here.
MINE.THE.GAP is an INNOSUP project which provides direct funding to SMEs as an innovation support. Its main instrument is open calls which can be seen as miniature H2020 open calls with far less bureaucracy for a grant up to 50.000€ per beneficiary. Through the open calls, MINE.THE.GAP brings SMEs from the raw materials sector together with companies that have solutions for a more digital, greener, and circular raw materials value chain.
Its second open call will be launched on 10 January 2022. As with reference to the composition of the GREENPEG consortium companies from Germany, Portugal and Spain are eligible to apply, we see this as a funding opportunity for those GREENPEG partners originating from these countries. In addition, as MINE.THE.GAP funds R&I projects at TRL 6-8, we regarded this as a clustering opportunity for GREENPEG. Therefore, this Info-Webinar is jointly held by MINE.THE.GAP and GREENPEG together with AXELERA (chemical cluster from France), IDiA (digital cluster from Spain) and ETPSMR (European Technology Platform on Sustainable Mineral Resources).
Here you can find the agenda for more information.
If you would like to participate, please register for the Info-Webinar here. If you encounter any troubles, please contact Mrs. Meng-Chun Lee (mengchun.lee@gkz-ev.de) for registration.
Looking forward to seeing you at the Info-Webinar!
GREENPEG project has been selected to participate in the EU Innovation Radar, an initiative to collect structured data about the innovation profile of EU funded projects and their outputs. The Innovation Radar is a European Commission initiative to identify high potential innovations and innovators in EU-funded research and innovation projects. The goal of this is to identify high-potential innovators and innovations; their specific ‘go to market’ needs; and, provide targeted recommendations. The aim is ultimately to encourage and support innovators in getting their innovations 'out of the lab' and into (or at least closer to) the market. You can find more information on this initiative in this link. The Innovation Radar is a complementary tool to the Horizon Results Platform. GREENPEG innovations in terms of technology development are seen in the introduction of the first EU certified helicopter nose stinger for district and prospect scale exploration, the piezoelectric seismometer as the only geophysical method which addresses the piezoelectric effect as a petrophysical characteristic to detect buried quartz-rich ore bodies, which commonly have indistinct low magnetic and radiogenic responses, and new drone-borne hyperspectral imaging tools for mapping small scale deposits.
One of the most promising mining developments in Europe is taking place on the Koralpe near Wolfsberg in Austria: Lithium mineral spodumene hosted by pegmatites which - processed on site - can one day serve a significant share of the needs of European battery factories. The first of three GREENPEG Focus Group Meetings took place here with a tour and a themed workshop at GREENPEG partner European Lithium Ltd. Several science journalists and representatives from the specialist administration in Germany accepted our invitation. The meeting focused on the topic of securing raw materials for the energy transition as well as future technologies and the contribution that European mining can make here. As well as the discussion with the guests on questions of raw material awareness and the understanding of mining in society in the context of regional value chains and global socio-economic challenges. Both sides rated the meeting as a great benefit and the cooperation is to be expanded in the future with the participation of other stakeholders. The next GREENPEG Focus Group Meeting will take place in northern Spain in autumn 2022.
Events
The European Union will be at the virtual mineral exploration and mining convention, PDAC 2021, in Toronto, Canada from 8-11 March. GREENPEG project is presented at the EU Research & Innovation - Mineral exploration and extraction booth. Our project partners will keep office hours over the entire duration of the trade show. Join us! Book a meeting or have matchmaking with our researchers, exploitation manager, and coordinator.
The EU is attending the annual PDAC convention from 2018 to 2022 as part of its efforts to secure a sustainable supply of raw materials with the support of the ‘partnership instrument’ that funds global EU cooperation.
QUARTZ2021 – International Symposium on Quartz – organised in the framework of the GREENPEG Horizon2020 project "New Exploration Tools for European Pegmatite Green-Tech Resources"
QUARTZ2021 gathers petrologists, mineralogists, sedimentologists, economic geologists, mining and processing engineers with one study object in common: QUARTZ. Quartz, the source of crystalline silicon metal in solar cells and about 1000 other applications, is classified as EU’s critical raw material. It is one of the target commodities of the ongoing GREENPEG exploration technology project. Besides its broad industrial applications, quartz is increasingly used for improved understanding of ore-forming and petrogenetic processes. The conference is followed by an exciting 3-day excursion to industrial mineral and metal deposits in southern Norway, including the Tørdal pegmatites, Litangen quartzite mine and Kongsberg silver mines. Join the symposium and be with us on the forefront research!