IDM – Intelligent Deep Mine

Published: 28/02/2011
Category: Corporate

On the 29th and 30th of March 2011, 30 people from eight different countries will be meeting at CommodasUltrasort GmbH in Hamburg for the EU-FP7 project initiative „IDM – Intelligent Deep Mine“ to discuss the basic conditions of sustainable mining technologies and its further development.

Rationale
Mineral raw materials are essential for the sustainable functioning of modern societies. The access to mineral raw materials is crucial for the sound functioning of the EU's economy. Nearly all sectors, such as construction, chemicals, automotive, aerospace, machinery and equipment sectors, which provide a total added value of € 1 324 billion and employment for some 30 million people, depend on access to raw materials.

In 2008 the European Commission launched the EU Raw Materials Initiative, which aims at ensuring sustainable supply of raw materials from European sources, and boosting overall resource efficiency to reduce the EU’s consumption of primary raw materials and decrease the relative import dependence.

In view of this, the IDM – Intelligent Deep Mine project marks the start of a series of development activities aiming to realise the concept of an invisible, zero-impact mine. The extractive sector, still seen as being old-fashioned and highly environment polluting, will join forces to revise this image showing that minerals extraction and processing can be approached with a cutting edge method with low impact underground and zero impact above ground.

Objective
The mine of the future, which most likely has to exploit mineral raw materials in greater depths than today, needs a completely different layout compared to today’s deep mines. This does not only include communication and planning tools but especially machinery for exploitation, transport and processing suitable to deal with the conditions expected in depths of some 2 km and beyond.

The core of the project will be to investigate into autonomous, highly selective mineral extraction processes and machinery based on new sensor technologies as well as innovative concepts for mass flow management and transportation. Such investigations have to be accompanied closely by rock mechanics and ground control issues.

The concept of an invisible, zero impact mine further includes to operate as much as possible working steps underground in order to produce the final product of a mine. Therefore new near to face processing methods including backfill have to be developed.

Impact
The project will have significant impact on societal level, as it will show the ability of the extractive sector to supply mineral raw materials needed for and in the EU in a sustainable manner with low impact underground and zero impact above ground. The envisaged awareness campaigns will serve to finally change the image of the extractive sector in Europe.

The work and especially the project results will significantly improve the competitiveness of the extractive sector in Europe as well as the competitiveness of European equipment suppliers. The European equipment manufacturers are world market leaders in providing mining technology. The work of IDM will contribute to further improve their reputations as cutting-edge technology suppliers.

The results to be achieved within IDM and beyond will significantly contribute to sustainability and the goals of the Lisbon strategy. New and especially better jobs will be created and the impact of mining activities will be dramatically reduced.

Finances
The IDM project will answer an upcoming call for proposal of the EC Seventh Framework NMP Programme. It is expected that projects answering this call will be in the order of 18 to 20 M€. IDM therefore also prepares work covering the mentioned financial range.

Top