Mine Environment Management Ltd
The Science Behind Success
The MEM team is driven by a shared passion for geoscience, the environment, and in particular a love of rocks. We like nothing better than a geoscience challenge presented that is yet to be solved, and even if it has been "solved" we beg to differ and strive to develop a better solution.
Given that global warming presents the largest and most significant current scientific challenge presented to this and future generations, and one which still requires effective solutions then this provides an almost infinite source of motivation for our team.
As we all work, live and breathe in the mining industry we are also confronted day to day with the challenges of defining sustainable development and how the circular economy may be demonstrated within large scale resource extraction projects.
We added the four year C-Sink funded project in 2023 to our ongoing portfolio of R&D activities like Carbon Sequestration and Mine Water Treatment & Metal Recovery.
Carbon sequestration is something that we have all come to recognise as a future technology that provides a significant and credible potential solution to both reducing carbon emissions and identifying a utility for the billions of tonnes of "waste" materials produced by the industry. This concept we feel provides an opportunity for a credible demonstration how a circular economy may actually be realised, and will provide motivation for the next generation of geoscientists.
Technical research projects have been undertaken by the team to determine how the application of Fragmentation analysis to the characterisation, management and long-term planning of waste rock has the potential to optimise project economics.
Read more about all of our green mining tech research and development projects.
C-SINK
MEM has partnered with other UK and European partners as part of the C-Sink consortium to win a competitive round of funding by the European Union and UKRI worth €7 million to the consortium. The C- SINK project aims to establish the foundations for a standardized and transparent European Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) market. The project’s overarching vision is to tackle climate change by complementing existing EU and international mitigation efforts through the responsible deployment of CDR technologies. Read more.
FRAGMENTATION BASED WASTE CLASSIFICATION
Incorporating the concept of sustainability and the circular economy as part of long-term waste management planning of mine operations and closure has become an important aspirational target globally in the mining industry. MEM has completed site based research that identifies an opportunity for the application of established fragmentation based technology and processes to the development of the mining plan for waste zones. Read more.
BLOCK MODELLING OF WASTE ZONES
Read our paper presented at ICARD 2022. Watch our short animated video.
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CARBON SEQUESTRATION/ FLUX ANALYSIS
The concept, scope and opportunities for large scale and permanent carbon sequestration within certain industrial wastes such as mine waste storage facilities are significant. A holistic approach for measuring CO2 flux from mine waste facilities and net carbon accounting. There is no literature on utilisation of waste rock and tailings for in situ carbon sequestration potential. Our novel methodology is developed to fill this knowledge gap in geoscience research as well as the mining industry. Read more.
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MINE WATER TREATMENT & METAL RECOVERY
The removal and potential recovery of metals from circum-neutral mine drainage is a challenge find out more.
