Of the many sustainability issues facing the mining sector, water has emerged as one of the most business critical. This project quantifies the benefits of investing in water and tailings technologies in financial terms in order to identify contextual environments wherein water-related savings make the most economic sense.
The outputs of this project will be of direct benefit to the mining sector and the industry partner through providing information needed to justify investments in water-saving technologies and thereby enhance more effective organizational decision-making. The project also provides participating interns with an opportunity to gain direct exposure and experience with one of the world’s largest equipment service and process knowledge suppliers for the mining sector. Furthermore, research outputs will be published in blog pieces, conference presentations and journal publications that will be made publicly available to other companies operating in Canada and beyond.
The two-year research project is being completed through the Mitacs Accelerate program (funding overview here) in partnership with mining equipment supplier, FLSmidth (company description here). The project is led and supervised by Dr. Nadja Kunz (Assistant Professor) and Dr. John Steen (Associate Professor) from The University of British Columbia. The current project team includes Benjamin Cox (Course Director: Mining and Exploration Business Economics at BRIMM, and PhD student), Sally Innis (PhD student), and Zorig Bat-Erdene (MASc student).