Overview
Title: VECTOR |
Key Contact: Dr Geertje Schuitema, UCD |
Funding Body: Horizon Europe |
Coordinating Institution: UCD |
Start Date: 1st June 2022 | End Date: 31st May 2025 |
Ensuring that the supply of renewable energy needed to achieve these goals is met will require a sharp increase in production, and a more responsible use, of critical raw materials. Whilst recycling can provide an increasing portion of these materials, recycling alone cannot meet the projected demand, which implies that further mining will be required if the EU is to meet its climate goals.
|
|
Title: GREENPEG |
Key Contact: Julian Menuge, UCD |
Funding Body: EU H2020 SC5 Consortium Project |
Coordinating Institution: UCD |
Start Date: 1st May 2020 |
End Date: 31st October 2024 |
GREENPEG (https://www.greenpeg.eu) is a consortium of 13 academic, government and industry partners in Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal and Spain and the United Kingdom, and led by Oslo University. Its principal aim is to develop virtual toolkits of geological, geochemical and geophysical methods that can be applied in mineral exploration for buried pegmatite bodies. Pegmatites are key sources of lithium, tantalum and other rare metals, along with high purity quartz. These materials are essential in many modern technologies, in particular those concerned with electricity storage and miniaturised electronics. However, it has so far proved impossible to locate pegmatites except where they are exposed on the surface, hence the need to develop ways to detect buried deposits. Julian Menuge (UCD iCRAG) leads Work Package 4, which deals with the development of prospect-scale methods. Other work packages focus on district and province scale methods, and on integrating between scales. GREENPEG also seeks to develop new exploration technologies, to develop and promote sustainable exploration and mining, and to convert its technical findings into industry-ready products. |
Title: EU ITS Platform |
Key Contact: Tim McCarthy, NUIM |
Funding Body: EU DG Move Connecting Europe Facility |
Coordinating Institution: |
Start Date: July 2015 |
End Date: December 2020 |
ITS for Road has been applied by EU Member States with great success for decades as a necessary mean to alleviate problems caused by an increasing demand for road transport while using the existing infrastructures. Ensuring continuity of high quality ITS services across Europe requires harmonisation of existing and future ITS services. The EU ITS Platform (EU EIP) is a forum where partners from the private and public sectors of almost all EU Member States will cooperate in order to foster current and future ITS deployments in Europe in a harmonised way. The EU EIP will also provide valid contribution for the future strategy, roll-out of services and policy recommendations on ITS. By monitoring, evaluating and disseminating results from the ITS Road Corridor projects (works within the CEF MAP ITS Call 2014), the EU ITS Platform can be considered as the technical European ITS "Knowledge Management Centre". |
Title: MODIO |
Key Contact: Koen Torremans |
Funding Body: EU H2020 Marie S Curie IF |
Coordinating Institution: UCD |
Start Date: April 2017 |
End Date: April 2019 |
MODIO will investigate the structural controls on mineralisation in the world class Irish Lower Carboniferous base metal deposits. Using top quality data from many Irish mining industry partners and government agencies, MODIO will investigate the links between the fault system framework and orebodies as well as the fundamental fault kinematics underlying the segmented extensional fault arrays that are seen to control these mineral deposits. The project will in detail constrain the fault-mineralisation network in several Irish mineral deposits in 3D, as well as providing regional constraints. These 3D models will be used as input for forward mechanical discrete element modelling of the fault systems through time and a reconstruction of the thermal and structural evolution of the basin using flexural backstripping. A better understanding of the fundamental structural controls on base metal deposits in extensional basins would significantly inform mineral exploration activities and reduce investment risks in Irish Zn-Pb deposits and many similar deposits throughout Europe. |
Title: Developing geochronology by LA-ICPMS imaging: Applications of U-Pb calcite dating in raw materials research |
Key Contact: David Chew |
Funding Body: Science Foundation Ireland (Investigators Programme) |
Coordinating Institution: TCD |
Start Date: December 2016 |
End Date: November 2021 |
Calcite is the major rock-forming mineral in limestones, and is a common mineral in veins in zinc and lead ore systems such as the world-class Irish Zn-Pb mineral province. Calcite is also a common in mineral in sedimentary basins, where it fills the porosity in hydrocarbon reservoirs. However, present approaches to uranium-lead dating of calcite suffer from large age uncertainties due to low uranium concentrations and/or high initial amounts of lead in the calcite crystal when it forms. This project is developing a new, rapid image-based approach to dating calcite by the uranium-lead method, using a laser-ablation system coupled to an ICP mass spectrometer. Isotopic dating of calcite has important industrial applications and also permits dating of carbonate rocks from key time periods in the ancient geological record, before the appearance of hard-bodied fossils. |
Title: European Network of Observatories and Research Infrastructures for Volcanology (EUROVOLC) |
Key Contact: Chris Bean |
Funding Body: European Commission, H2020 |
Coordinating Institution: DIAS |
Start Date: February 2018 |
End Date: January 2021 |
EUROVOLC will construct an integrated and harmonized European volcanological community able to fully support, exploit and build-upon existing and emerging national and pan-European research infrastructures, including e-Infrastructures of the European Supersite volcanoes. The harmonization includes linking scientists and stakeholders and connecting still isolated volcanological infrastructures located at in situ volcano observatories (VO) and volcanological research institutions (VRIs). EUROVOLC will overcome fragmentation at various levels, including community, project and discipline fragmentation by addressing four main themes: Community building, volcano-atmosphere interaction, sub-surface processes and volcanic crisis preparedness and risk management. |
Title: Tracing Gold-Copper-Zinc with advanced microanalysis, "Gold Insight" |
Key Contact: Prof Balz Kamber |
Funding Body: Geological Survey Ireland |
Coordinating Institution: Trinity College Dublin |
Start Date: April 2018 |
End Date: March 2020 |
This project is contributing to the challenge of securing primary resources by developing innovative techniques for exploration.The innovative new techniques will arise from a novel combination of state-of-the-art micro-chemical analysis: trace element mapping and in situ Pb and S isotope analysis as well as trace-element informed geochronology. The technology readiness level of these techniques will be elevated by increasing the speed and throughput of analysis. The tools will be trained on known orogenic gold (Au) exploration targets for which full 3D geological and structural models will be developed and integrated with absolute geochronology. The targets are in active |
Title: MetalIntelligence |
Key Contact: Balz Kamber, TCD |
Funding Body: EU H2020 Marie S Curie EID |
Coordinating Institution: TCD |
Start Date: September 2016 |
End Date: September 2020 |
This European Industrial Doctorate (EID) focuses on future efficient minerals analysis, processing and training. Transformational change caused by the third industrial revolution, which itself relies on extraction of raw materials, provides the impetus. The pathway from searching for mineral deposits to metal production is complex and involves a number of sectors (geosciences, chemical analysts, mining, processing, metallurgy) that have tended to work in silos. Limited intersectoral collaboration has led to compartmentalised thinking which has become an impediment to improved resource and energy efficiency. The overall aim of MetalIntelligence is to disrupt this compartmentalisation, by training 6 ESRs through a multi-disciplinary network of academic and industry leaders with an exceptionally broad range of expertise and skills. The team comprises three beneficiaries (2 academic, in Ireland and Sweden, and one Industry, Finland) as well as 4 partners (from the UK, Ireland, and Finland) who will provide secondment opportunities and/or industrial supervision. The objectives of MetalIntelligence were designed to align with European innovation capacity policies and the network will contribute to keeping the industries competitive by developing innovative, more gender-balanced human capital for the raw materials sector in Europe. |