Supply of Mineral Resources (SoS MinErals)

Country / jurisdiction: United Kingdom · Year: 2012 · Status: In force · Level: National · Type: Voluntary

Supply of Mineral Resources (SoS MinErals) is a research programme, backed by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, in partnership with industry and academia.

The SoS MinErals programme is made up of four full grant projects covering research into all of the e-tech elements: cobalt (Co), tellurium (Te), selenium (Se), neodymium (Nd), indium (In), gallium (Ga) and heavy rare earth elements (HREE). The projects will deliver a greater understanding of fundamental Earth processes and see the application of this science to develop novel extraction technologies, which will reduce carbon footprint and increase process efficiency whilst tailoring these solutions to end user needs.

The programme has two high level goals:

to quantify the processes mobilising and concentrating mineral associations supporting environmental technologies (environmental technologies [i.e. low carbon emitting] are mentioned here as only one of the strategic drivers informing which minerals/elements the programme will focus on); and

to predict the environmental impact of low carbon extraction/recovery of strategic minerals.

Official source: https://www2.bgs.ac.uk/sosminerals/about.html