Digging deep: Showroom for program results
Digging deep,?is a glimpse into some of the many things that the program has contributed to, helped create or enabled during the 11 years the program has existed.
Our vision is a world-leading mining and mineral producing industry that contributes to a sustainable society. As one of Sweden's strategic innovation programs our efforts have?been towards?innovation capacity, technology development, social?acceptance and qualified personnel. In the coming months, we will share examples, large and small, narrow and broad, where Swedish Mining Innovation and our partners have contribued the vision. Short and sweet, easy to understand, gathered under one of these three headings:
DIGGING DEEP: INNOVATION DRIVERS
How to fast track innovation collab
A joint innovation arena for SMEs (small and medium enterprises) and mining industry was missing in the mining innovation system. This was revealed in a survey conducted by Swedish Mining Innovation.
Large corporations wanted more technical expertise from SMEs to strengthen their R&D, while SMEs wanted support in finding ways to collaborate. In 2023, Swedish Mining Innovation launched the SME Network. In its first year, the network matched 51 SME innovations with seven mining partners (26 SMEs being introduced to the mining sector for the very first time).
Unlocking doors, leveling the ground
The network's mission is to create this innovation arena for the mining industry to be the link between the challenges of the companies and the sustainable and innovative solutions of the SMEs. The SME Network is open to all potential suppliers who can solve the challenges of the mining industry.
LKAB is one of seven participating case owners.
- LKAB is facing a major transition in a relatively short time. At the same time, technological development is exploding. Close collaboration with innovative suppliers will be necessary to solve that equation," says Markus Odevall, Innovation Strategist at LKAB.?
- The SME Network's method differs from LKAB's traditional purchasing process. In this case, we made an internal call for challenges, or cases, that SME companies then pitched solutions for. The best pitches were introduced to the case owners,?says Markus Odevall .
Enabling more innovation
The network coordinator, Erik Hagenrud has twenty years' experience of SME business development and export.
?The SMEs we are looking for could be a mining supplier, but it could also be a company who never considered the mining industry as a potential market segment for their products or services.
- Now that our sector is entering Sweden's next major innovation initiative, Impact Innovation, we want to take the experiences of the SME network and build on them in an even broader context, e.g. with more parts of the value chain," concludes Erik Hagenrud.
How the SME Network works:
1. Find the problem. The case owner (e.g. LKAB) presents one or more challenges that require innovative solutions.
2. Scoping the case. SME Network conceptualizes these challenges into clearly defined cases.
3. Search.?SME Network pushes the case in relevant channels and industry forums to pull innovation proposals from suppliers.
4. Quality assurance. SME Network reviews proposals and ensures that the SMEs meet the case criteria, and that the submissions are elgible for SME Network support.
5. Match-make. The SME Network team leads the dialogue between supplier and case owners until the right innovation is found and a collaboration between the parties is established.
DIGGING DEEP: SOCIETAL SUSTAINABILITY
领英推荐
ATTRACT -?Roadmap for attractive, inclusive and safe mining
ATTRACT focuses on digitalization, competence, safety and gender equality. The project is led by Lena Abrahamsson, professor and chair of Work Science at Lule? University of Technology, in partnership LKAB, Boliden and BDX. ATTRACT consists of GenSafe and the Digital Miner.
Gender equality and safety
GenSafe focuses on the relationship between gender equality and safety in the workplace culture is investigated and how working methods and methods that stimulate a safe and inclusive mining culture throughout the supply chain can be developed.
- Interviews with employees and managers show that there are certain norms in the local workplace culture that risk simultaneously working against inclusion and safety. These norms relate to gender and to interests and origins.
Findings also show that safety culture has been well integrated into the operations, while the work on gender equality has been more difficult to integrate. This applies both to work with their own staff and between suppliers and clients.
One way to promote a safer and more inclusive mining culture could therefore be to strengthen the gender and equality perspective in the existing safety work.
The employee and digitalization
The Digital Miner is intended as a vision of future jobs and workplaces in a future digitalized high-tech mine. Combining technological development with social and human perspectives will be important to create an attractive, healthy and safe working environment in the mining industry.
- Up- and re-skilling will become a natural part of work. Demand for skills such as creativity, flexibility and teamwork, but also industry knowledge such as mining, metallurgy and geology will increase in the future, says Lena Abrahamsson.
Preliminary results show that the introduction of autonomous trucks will fundamentally change the workplace. The tasks will be both more responsible and more complicated. Increased safety both during loading and transportation is another area that will change.
ATTRACT is funded by Swedish Mining Innovation and scheduled to end in 2025. We look forward to welcoming a roadmap for attractive, inclusive and safe mining!
DIGGING DEEP: FUTURE TECHNOLOGY
Miniminzing energy use in mineral processing
Comminution is the process of crushing and milling rock extracted from the mine into fine particles. It is essential for transforming mineral bearing ores into metals and other industrial materials. The team at startup Communition Re-imagined Sweden (CRS) (led by Prof Magnus Evertson and Clive Wynne) has developed a grinding method to reduce energy use by up to 80%.
Communition consumes around 4% of the world’s electricity and this is set to increase significantly with the demand for minerals to support the green transition. Swedish Mining Innovation has funded CRS'?three-year?project focused on proving the technology at pilot scale and developing an updated concept design for a demonstration mill. ? ?
- Our focus is to industrialize and commercialize a promising new, low energy technology for the fine grinding and milling ?of rock ores for mineral processing and other industrial applications say Magnus and Clive.
The ARBS technology
The ARBS process addresses many of the known problems of conventional circuits. The technology is based on single particle fracture, which is generally accepted to be the most energy efficient comminution method. Initial laboratory tests demonstrated that the fracture energy of the ARBS process can be as low as a remarkable 20% of the circuit energy of a conventional comminution installation. The fracture mechanism of the ARBS process has demonstrated exceptional flotation recovery characteristics, even at comparatively coarse final product top sizes.
Together these two factors enable energy savings over conventional circuits in the range of an astonishing 60 - 80% for the equivalent mineral recovery and open the door for further recovery process optimisation. This low energy consumption and the machine design create, for the first time, a very real possibility to power comminution circuits from renewable sources.
What's next?
The team is focusing on developing a robust and reliable design suitable for use in a production environment, either as a demonstration plant, or a small production mill.
- Each of our project partners has at least one application where they see the benefits of deploying the new technology, and several other parties have approached us to evaluate the potential to deploy the technology outside of conventional mineral processing. The team is using all these opportunities to upgrade the core mill design concept to be suitable for the larger and more challenging production environment.
COMING UP
Next Digging deep Newsletter will be out in June. Our regular newsletter will be published in the end of the month.
Stay tuned!