Remining of Mine Water Sludge – an Update on Successful Metal Extraction

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Authors: Dr. rer. nat. Bastian Reker, Jule Gleba, B.Sc., Georg Agricola University of Applied Sciences, Research Center of Post-Mining, Bochum/Germany, Dr.-Ing. Matic Jovičević-Klug, Dr. Patricia Jovičević-Klug, Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials, Düsseldorf/Germany, Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Westermann, Georg Agricola University of Applied Sciences, Research Center of Post-Mining, Bochum/Germany

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As part of the IAW3³ research project, which the Research Center of Post-Mining (FZN) at the Georg Agricola University of Applied Sciences (THGA), Bochum/Germany, launched in 2022, a systematic investigation was carried out into the precipitation products of mine water at active water management sites in the Ruhr area, Saarland and Ibbenbüren with regard to the critical and economically valuable elements they contain. As a result of these analyses, the Ibbenbüren site has proven to be promising for the possible extraction of some critical metals. As part of a collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials, Düsseldorf/Germany, a novel process based on a plasma reduction process was tested on dried precipitation products from the settling basin in Ibbenbüren for direct metal extraction.

This article is based on the German-language version published in the proceedings of the 23rd Colloquium on Abandoned Mining of Clausthal University of Technology (DOI 10.21268/20250804-0).