Highlights

In times of increasing information density, breathtaking acceleration and international pressure to innovate, rapid access to information and business contacts can provide decisive competitive advantages. This is where the German Mining Network (GMN), which was launched in 2016, comes in. Its partners, offerings and operating principles are explained in this article. The network offers German companies in Germany and abroad ...

When we think of natural resources, most people think of coal, oil and gas, iron ore, copper and gold. Public perception is dominated by their importance in areas such as energy production, steel production and infrastructure – and traditionally, the commodities sector is associated primarily with the extraction of fossil fuels. This is one of the reasons the entire sector ...

The evolving hyperspectral sensors have become a big ally for a large range of applications in remote sensing for the monitoring of a variety of earth ecosystems and processes (natural and anthropogenic). The processes occurring within the mining life cycle are not an exception. Hyperspectral sensors have been widely used in a large number of applications ranging from exploration, operation ...

The decision to reconfigure and straighten the route of the Emscher river in 1902 was to herald the start of a dismal future for the waterway as the industrial age went on to reach its peak. While the Ruhr and Lippe became fresh water streams for the Ruhr valley, the Emscher, which was more centrally located between the other two ...

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 ...