Highlights

Agenda 2030 and the sustainable development goals have continued the process of giving equal consideration to social, ecological and economic aspects in the planning and implementation of projects of all kinds. The dynamics associated with the increasing world population, globalization and the fight against the climate crisis have taken on an essential role. This brings to bear developments and instruments ...

A secure and sustainable supply of raw materials is one of the societal challenges of our time. At the same time, the extraction of raw materials itself faces challenges of great complexity. These include, among others, the trend towards lower grade deposits, increasing requirements for carbon neutral raw material extraction and rapid advancements in digital technologies. To meet this complexity, ...

The European Commission has been striving to initiate an EU-wide coal phase-out since the end of 2017 in the form of the initiative “Coal Regions in Transition”. The aim of the activities is to provide structural support to the EU’s coal regions during their move – the “transition” – away from coal. The initiative also represents a pioneering project on ...

The sustainable management of geological resources presents a challenge for environmental and geomonitoring actions with all the diverse tasks and assignments involved, such as water management and the monitoring of environmental changes. Today’s geo- and environmental monitoring processes involve the observation of many different factors and use satellite-supported optical remote detection with multispectral or hyperspectral sensors and radar remote sensing. ...

Abandoned contaminated mining sites such as heaps or slag usually cause major environmental problems, which are or have been rehabilitated in Germany by the government with a large amount of taxes. However, they usually also contain significant amounts of urgently needed strategic raw materials and consist mainly of mineral components that can be used in the ceramics or construction materials ...

Recently, the recycling of metallurgical residues, e. g., electric arc furnace slag, has gained increasing importance. The potential of metallurgical slags often lies, in addition to the metallic value content, among other things in their use as aggregates for the construction industry, e. g., cement industry. The development of this potential requires a systematic mineralogical and micromechanical and physical characterization of the ...

The mining industry of the past has left long-lasting tracks in the territorial structure of the Ruhr area. Dealing responsibly with the area’s mining heritage in terms of sustainable regional developments is a major challenge. In 2014, the 17 pertinent municipalities and districts, together with the state government of North-Rhine Westphalia, RAG Aktiengesellschaft and the Ruhr Regional Association (RVR), concluded ...

The year 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Water Management Office of the Westphalian Miners’ Union Fund. This institution still exists today, albeit in a modified form and under a different name. This fact underlines its importance for mining and post-mining. The history and the constantly changing tasks over the course of 100 years for this ...

Industrial computed tomography (CT) is a non-destructive X-ray computerized method for studying the three-dimensional (3D) distribution and microtexture of phases within individual solid samples. For geological and mineral product samples, CT allows visualization of phases with significant density contrast as well as the recognition of gas and fluid inclusions. Also, the technique precisely defines the in-situ location of minerals of ...

The Research Center of Post-Mining (FZN) at the TH Georg Agricola University (THGA) in Bochum/Germany has significantly expanded the range of its research programme since 2019/2020. Its scope has now been broadened by the new research division “Reactivation and Transition”. Research in this division focuses on land development and regional policy, socio-economic aspects and governance of post-mining. Emphasis is less ...