On October 20, 2022, the documentary “Responsible Mining in Europe: A new paradigm to counter climate change” was officially launched. The documentary searches for answers to Europe’s seemingly problematic relationship with primary mining of energy-transition metals....
The project NEMO (“Near-zero-waste recycling of low-grade sulphidic mining waste for critical-metal, mineral and construction raw-material production in a circular economy”) is an EU H2020 Innovation Action project. Since 2018 it has developed and upscaled...
In a fruitful collaboration of SOLVOMET/SIM2 with the group of Prof. Dirk de Vos (KU Leuven), researchers have demonstrated that choline chloride-ethylene glycol based deep-eutectic solvents should not be used for high-temperature leaching processes for cobalt...
Moving from single-metal lithium mining to (near-)zero-waste, multi-metal/mineral mining… that is the challenge we set ourselves in the EXCEED proposal that was submitted in March 2022 in the call “HORIZON-CL4-2022-RESILIENCE-01-07”. Following a favourable...
Fossil-free steel? Trucks of 313 tonne capacity electrically driven? Industry streams recycled for research? A smelter almost 100 years old that has become one of the largest recyclers of e-waste or the so-called world’s greenest battery factory? All of these ideas...
In May 2020, SOLVOMET filed the patent application “Method for producing battery grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate” (priority date: 2020-05-13). The patent application (WO2021228936A1, Prof. Koen Binnemans) became public in November 2021. The first part of the...
SOLVOMET ISC is KU Leuven’s Industrial Service Centre for Circular Hydrometallurgy. We support mining, metallurgical & recycling companies in the development of more sustainable (circular, low-energy input) hydrometallurgical processes, using state-of-the-art lab & mini-pilot scale experimental facilities.