Austrian Climate Day 2023 in Leoben
The Resources Innovation Center of the Montanuniversität Leoben organizes together with the CCCA the 23rd Austrian Climate Day at the Montanuniversität from April 11 – 13, 2023.
Mineral extraction is crucial to Europe’s twin digital and green transition. It is essential that these minerals are not extracted at the expense of the environment and people. In order to have a truly green transition, we also need sustainable management in the extractive sector: Minimising the environmental footprint of an extraction project while at the same time contributing to a local and societal license to operate. This transition to sustainable management is challenging, both for policy and industry.
The SUMEX Massive Open Online Course will address five key challenges that industry and policy face in this transition. The course makes use of scientific concepts and holistic sustainability concepts at the operational level and will outline potential solutions based on practical examples applicable across Europe.
What is in it for you?
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to…
Who is the course for?
This course is designed for leaders, managers and stakeholders in the mineral extractive industry who want to learn about the challenges, solutions and new developments in sustainability.
It will be especially useful for public administrators and industry practitioners wishing to understand and implement sustainability management at any stage of the mining life cycle, from exploration to post-closure.
This course also benefits those interested in the importance of raw materials for a sustainable future and the challenges connected to them!
On 23 September 2022, the RIC Leoben team had the pleasure to represent EIT RawMaterials at the EIT OpenDay in Vienna, together with EIT Manufacturing, EIT Health, EIT UrbanMobility and EIT Culture&Creativity.
Every speaker confirmed that the major strength of EIT is collaboration within a large professional network, something that we at RIC Leoben and EIT RawMaterials have been supporting since 2015!
on 23 September 2022 in Vienna
Did you know that the @European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) is the largest innovation ecosystem in Europe with more than 2,000 participating actors? Pretty impressive!
All EIT Innovation Communities follow a pan-European approach to connect business, education and research while also ensuring close collaboration with the local industry ecosystems!
And we are also near you in #Austria and #Slovakia! Join us in Vienna on 23. September for the EIT Open Day Austria & Slovakia and become part of our network!
Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/eit-open-day-austria-and-slovakia-tickets-385617972737
@EIT Manufacturing @EIT RawMaterials, @EIT Health, @EIT Urban Mobility, and @EIT Culture and Creativity
Separation of small-size mixed plastic fractions and processing into high-quality material
Duration: 10/2022 – 09/2024
The Resources Innovation Center is happy to announce a newcomer among its Climate Actions projects!
ReFibreValue is a FFG-funded cooperation project between Montanuniversität Leoben, the international technology group ANDRITZ and technology start-up Circulyzer GmbH is successfully approaching the first year of activities. As a manufacturing by-product, Andritz AG generates significant amounts of textile production waste in form of polyamides (PA) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) which cannot be separated in an economically and ecologically sensible way using the processes currently available. One possible separation technology is offered by Circulyzer GmbH. The ReFibreValue project aims to develop and optimise a separation process that would produce partial fractions that are as pure as possible. ReFibreValue thanks to the collaboration among the industrial partners and MUL’s RIC, the chairs of Polymer Processing (KV), Materials Science and Testing of Polymers (WPK), Waste Recycling Technology and Waste Management (AVAW), Processing and Refinement (AuV) is enabling the processing of valuable waste and its return to the material cycle, making a valuable contribution to European circular economy agenda.
First results are promising for the innovative separation of textile production waste offered by Circulyzer GmbH. in form of polyamides (PA) from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) The tests were performed on manufacturing waste generated by ANDRITZ AG as a by-product.
The project aims to achieve sustainability and climate protection and contributes to SDG13 climate protection measures, SDG12 ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns and, SDG9 industry, innovation and infrastructure and subordinately the research project also contributes to SDG8 (increase in resource efficiency). RIC assumes the role of project management, communication, networking and further development for future funding within the consortia.
Discover more on the podcast & video here
On 20 April 2022, Federal Minister Elisabeth Köstinger visited the research facilities of the Montanuniversität Leoben that are working on pyrolysis for the production of hydrogen. These activities are located in the “Resources Innovation Center” (RIC Leoben), to which Minister Köstinger promised funding of three million Euros, divided between the years 2022 – 2028. The focal points of the funding agreement are activities on the following areas:
The Resources Innovation Center Leoben will work on research topics (dissertations) on these themes, involving research funding from Austrian, European and global funding programmes (FFG, Horizon Europe, EIT RawMaterials). “Crisis security requires raw materials. Not all raw materials are infinitely available everywhere, which is why the Resources Innovation Center (RIC) at the Montanuniversität Leoben is an important institution that we are supporting in its work with three million Euros. Research is already being carried out here to find scientific answers to future challenges in the form of innovations,” said Elisabeth Köstinger.
We are proud to have published numerous papers in th current Berg- und Hüttenmännische Monatshefte. They are mostly published in both german and english, all current papers can be found here as mostly open access.
The BHM is the only Austrian journal for the entire mining and metallurgy sector. It is divided thematically. The issues with even numbers mainly report on the extraction of solid mineral raw materials in the form of original articles, whereby the authors come from both the practice-oriented industrial sector and the university research sector. The odd-numbered issues are dedicated to the metallurgical sector. It covers both the extraction of metals, including recycling, as well as further processing and metallurgy, and the refractory industry. Environmental issues and sustainability occupy a large space. The sections “Montan-Rundschau” and “Aus der Industrie” provide brief, concise information on current economic events in the industry and introduce new products and processes.
Montanuniversität Leoben as part of the TU Austria-Universities was responsable for on of the breakoutsession for European Forum Alpach. The topaic was “Plastics? Sustainable!”
Plastics are essential in our daily life, yet their image is very negative. In fact, the majority of plastics are used in valuable products e.g. in medicine, mobility, infrastructure or energy transmission and thus contribute to many SDGs. This BOS deals with various aspects of plastic, including their environmental relevance and usage behaviour. How plastics fit into the Circular Economy Approach will be discussed and ideas on the sustainability increase of plastic products will be presented.
ENG | BS 7: Plastics? Sustainable! from AITtomorrow2day on Vimeo.
Find out more about the ALPBACH TECHNOLOGY SYMPOSIUM 2021 at https://www.ait.ac.at/en/news-events/alpbach-technology-symposium-2021
At this year’s online Green Tech Jam, the solution of the challenge “Circular Economy meets Distributed Ledger – a transparent PET bottle product cycle” set by the Montanuniversität Leoben (involved institutes: Resources Innovation Center & Industrial Logistics), which was developed by an interdisciplinary team of students, won the first place. The team “sixpack” was supervised by the Chair of Industrial Logistics during the 24-hour challenge and consisted of three Slovenian students from Graz University of Technology as well as three Montan students. They were able to prevail against 7 other teams, each of which worked on one of 6 different challenges provided by the companies t-matix, BDI, Komptech and AI.engineer as well as the Climate and Energy Fund, and us.
In the Android app developed by the team “sixpack”, QR codes attached to bottles can be scanned and information about the bottles retrieved from the distributed data storage. The path of the bottle – from PET production to the supermarket – is displayed graphically on a map and unconventional energy comparisons with more or less everyday activities (e.g. the duration of headbanging during a concert) are carried out and visualised.
At the interdisciplinary Hackathon under the slogan “Code & Concept for a greener future” organised by the Green Tech Cluster Austria together with the Climate Change Center Austria (CCCA) and Graz University of Technology,8 teams of students from different disciplines and different european universities had around 24 hours to work on a problem relating to the topics of climate and the environment and to present a digital solution for it. In total 36 international students participated at this event. The MUL challenge also competed as part of one of two Climathon challenges at the Green Tech Jam. Climathon is a global climate hackathon under the umbrella of EIT Climate-KIC.
More information about the whole event can be found at https://www.greentech.at/nachlese-green-tech-jam/
The game of “The Briefcase of mineral applications” aims to familiarise the player with the minerals that are used in the manufacture of everyday objects. The specific target audience are primary and secondary schools which include from 6 to 18-year-old students and their teachers. The project is orientated for Wider Society Learning (WSL) and aims to raise students’ knowledge of mining activities and mineral applications. Given the era of a growing prevalence of online teaching and learning, we believe tools such as this one will prove to be effective and beneficial for the education of young people by using both their native and the English language.
Try it our here: https://www.thebriefcasegame.eu/home