Projet OPTIMALMINE (Horizon Europe, appel à projets 2024)
Action : Staff Exchanges
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The European Union is currently addressing challenges related to the supply of essential raw materials that are used for clean technologies (e.g. lithium for EV batteries, copper for electrification) and everyday life (e.g. metals for iPhones). This includes policy initiatives such as the raw materials list and the Critical Raw Materials Act (European Commission, 2019) which sets 10% of the EU's annual needs for extraction as a benchmark to be reached by 2030. Reaching this target will require an increase in mining efficiency to make currently unprofitable mine deposits economically viable. Mining is responsible for around 8% of the global carbon footprint with a very large part of carbon footprint due to mining activities, hence innovations that reduce the amount of waste rock to be excavated in turn lead to substantial reductions of the overall mine carbon footprint. Topological slope optimisation solves the problem by introducing two paradigm shifts: 1. Overall steeper, hence more efficient, pit walls without compromising safety. 2. Automated pit wall design.  The proposed solution focuses on a highly innovative approach for open-pit mines: excavating pit wall slopes according to their topological optimal shape instead of the established current practice of designing pit walls of constant inclination within each rock layer. The methodology developed by Prof. Utili (UNEW) finds the optimal non-planar slope geometry for a specified target Factor of Safety (FoS), which is significantly steeper than any planar one (see Figure 1). Topological slope optimisation has the potential to change the open pit mining industry: if this methodology was adopted by 50% of >5,000 mines worldwide and considering the average financial and environmental gains obtained from five mine case studies published in peer-reviewed mining journals leads to the following financial estimates: €6.5B/year of direct savings from less rock volume excavated and 200M tonnes/year of CO2eq emi

Mots clés : mine optimisation rock slope engineering optimal slope design machine learning applied to topological optimal slope design

Participants :
- Université de Vigo (Espagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 70140.0 €
- Université de la Colombie-Britannique (Canada) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Vale (Brazil) (Brésil) — Partner, associated partner, Autres, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université polytechnique de Hong Kong (Chine) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Cinf engineering co ltd (Chine) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
- Asarel medet ad (Bulgarie) — Partner, associated partner, Organismes privés (hors enseignement), subvention : 0.0 €
- Université polytechnique de Catalogne (Espagne) — Partner, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 270540.0 €
- Université nationale de Colombie (Colombie) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université du Nord-Est (Chine) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Mining and Metallurgy Institute Bor (Serbie) — Partner, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 265530.0 €
- Université du Queensland (Australie) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Université de Newcastle upon Tyne (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 465930.0 €
- Virginia Tech (Etats-Unis) — Partner, associated partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €