The Sustainable Inorganic Materials Management (SIM²) Consortium at KU Leuven

Abstract

The transition towards resource efficient, closed-loop economies is an urgent necessity as our world is facing resource shortages and unprecedented environmental challenges. Research groups in Metallurgy, Geology, Chemical Engineering, Building Materials, Chemistry, Economics, Process Psychology and Law at KU Leuven (Belgium) have recently connected their expertise in the area of recovery and recycling of inorganic materials into a structural collaboration, the 'Sustainable Inorganic Materials Management' (SIM²) program. This has led to a growth and an intensification of research projects as well as local and international research cooperation, propelling SIM 2 In our presentation we will highlight the vision, the organization in collaborative programs as well as the research topics of the program at KU Leuven. In addition we will elucidate the role of SIM to a flagship topic for the involved research groups and for the KU Leuven as a whole. 2 in co-organizing a potential urban mining node for an EIT-KIC on critical raw materials.

Global Research Progress and Trends on Critical Metals: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…Due to the shortage of resources and the need to extract critical metals from secondary sources (low-grade tailings; solid or liquid waste) microbial-activity-based methods are developing as innovative alternatives for the supply of critical metals and materials [33][34][35][36]. Various process drivers and limitations such as reaction time, pH, temperature, mass transfer rate, nutrient requirement, pulp density, and particle size are important research parameters to take into account [37][38][39][40][41].…”