PERSEPHONE Meeting, 10 & 11 April 2024, Brussels, Belgium

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The La Palma Research Centre team met for the first time the PERSEPHONE Project Consortium on the 10 and 11 April 2024, in Brussels, Belgium. The meeting was dedicated to discussions on WP 1 – Specifications and requirements for enabling sustainable deep mining. PERSEPHONE aims to address current and future mining challenges by developing pioneering technologies for pushing the limits of EU mining industry and embodiment of autonomous and integrated mine exploration capability to access deep deposits of critical raw materials through hard-to-reach deep and abandoned mines. Within this project LPRC acts as a Associated Partner of INTRAW.

The two-day meeting focused on analysing the tasks of WP 1, which involve the definition of the specifications and requirements that the project team needs to take into account for sustainable deep mining operations in the future. Therefore, discussions involved potential end-user requirements for technologies for exploration and extraction of raw materials, framework conditions and evaluation scenarios for implementation of the new technologies.

The role of LPRC in this project will be the development of technology roadmaps and regulatory frameworks for the future development and implementation of the PERSEPHONE technologies.

Follow the project news on the website and social media.

LPRC co-hosted the recent CRM-geothermal webinar

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LPRC, partner in the CRM-geothermal project, co-hosted a webinar between this project and RAWMINA, entitled “Frontier technologies for sustainable extraction of critical raw materials”. Both projects are working towards critical raw materials recovery from mine waste and geothermal fluids, a recent trend in the raw materials field.

Marcio Tameirao Pinto, Project Manager of LPRC, was the co-organizer and co-host of the webinar session. He also presented the ClusterHub ‘Materials for batteries’, where CRM-geothermal is a member. Recording can be seen here.

This webinar was an excellent opportunity to bring together the research and industry communities working on the recovery of critical raw materials, to discuss the innovation in the field.  The recordings of the presentations given are available online.

INVESTIGO Research Fellows 2024

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LPRC welcomes the new 3 INVESTIGO Research Fellows!

Three young researchers have joined our multidisciplinary team during the past month of February and will be working with us in our office in Los Llanos de Aridane, La Palma. They have been selected thorough a series of interviews conducted as part of the INVESTIGO Program, funded under the Spanish Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, which belongs to the European Union’s “Next-Generation EU” scheme.

The three selected candidates constitute a complementary team of professionals that will work on the project “ABCanarias – Literacy of the population of La Palma on sustainable development, innovation and technology and experiences of local and regional cooperation”. The project aims at understanding local perspectives and knowledge on the ocean and on renewable energies, hence contributing to boosting La Palma and Canary Islands’ citizens engagement in sustainable development. Besides, through a participatory science approach, the project aims at collecting experiences of local and regional cooperation, to better perceive the strengths, weaknesses, needs, demands, and successes of these actions, and map the crucial role of EU Outermost Regions in the context of European and global transformation of our societies towards sustainability.

LPRC would like to thank all the applicants (even if not selected) for showing interest and motivation in working with us and encourages all of them and, generally, young people, to keep pursuing a career in research.

Do you wish to learn more about the INVESTIGO Program and the ABCanarias Project?

A project website will soon be publicly available, which will outline the project’s concept and objectives, and will be regularly updated with project developments and public announcements. Follow LPRC on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, & stay tuned for more news!

CIRAN

CIRAN Consortium Meeting, Lisbon, Portugal, 22-25 January 2024

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The CIRAN project held its annual physical meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, between the 22nd and 25th of January 2024. This event was attended by representatives of the partners as well as members of the Group of Experts. La Palma Research Centre joined the event with five members and hosted a data collection workshop. 

The first day of the CIRAN consortium meeting was dedicated to the partners’ presentations on the different Work Packages that make the project, from the technical to the less technical ones, where partners discussed their work towards the responsible sourcing of critical raw materials in protected zones through a plan for sustainable resource extraction. LPRC presented its work on Task 3.3 – Nexus between policy decisions and drivers of change. 

The second day was dedicated to two data collection workshops. LPRC was responsible for organizing and hosting the first workshop of the day, which was dedicated to scenarios planning. The second workshop was dedicated to policy making. For its workshop the LPRC team created four unique stations to discuss future scenarios for CIRAN based on the assessment of the Drivers of Change, the results from the Delphi Survey and the previously-developed INTRAW geopolitical scenarios. This was a great opportunity to engage with project partners and experts to collect unique views and opinions that will help the LPRC team to create CIRAN Scenarios for 2035. 

On the third day the meeting participants went on a field trip to the municipality of Porto de Mós, where they were given presentations on the conciliation between mining activities and nature conservation, as represented by the quarrying activities within the boundaries of the Serras de Aire and Candeeiros Nature Park, relevant examples for CIRAN’s work. The participants had the chance to visit such quarrying activities and to understand what drives the balance between economic interest and nature protection. 

The final day was dedicated to management aspects, including the planning for the coming year’s activities, where engagement with experts and stakeholders will be a crucial aspect. 

Follow the project on its social media channels and website to keep up-to-date!

FIREFLY Project Consortium Meeting, Tenerife, January 2024

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The LPRC team hosted the recent FIREFLY Consortium Meeting in Tenerife, Canary Islands, one year after the start of the project. Partners from all over Europe flew to the Tenerife to engage in two days of discussions on the status of the project and the next steps for the year 2024.

The two days were dedicated to discussions on the work packages that represent the project’s design and implementation towards a flexible, predictive and renewable electricity-powered electrochemical toolbox for a sustainable transition of the catalyst-based European chemical industry. The group discussed topics such as development and validation of AI-based tools, R&D of flexible technologies and Life-cycle sustainability Assessment. La Palma Research Centre, leader of Work Package 2 – Supply of waste catalyst and mapping of relevant resources – and Task 2.2 – Material flow analysis and GIS inventory of relevant resources, presented the work done in 2023.

Sites visits to Tenerife’s recycling industry complemented the meeting with an important technical aspect that can help the FIREFLY partners to develop and implement their tasks.

It was a pleasure to prepare and host the FIREFLY’s project Consortium Meeting. See you next time!