AVANTIS - new project financed by Horizon Europe

On July 24, 2023, the European Commission announced the results of the Innovative technologies for sustainable and decarbonised extraction (RIA) call. One of the project to be financed is the AVANTIS: "Sustainable, decarbonised co-extraction of vanadium and titanium minerals from Europe's low-grade vanadium-bearing titanomagnetite deposits", which will be carried out by the international consortium including KGZiG team under the supervision of prof. Adam Piestrzyński in cooperation with the Department of Environmental Engineering at WILiGZ AGH. The project is financed by Horizon Europe (HORIZON-CL4-2023-RESILIENCE-01-02)

AVANTIS’ rationale is that Europe has a multitude of unexploited, low-grade V-bearing titanomagnetite deposits in Finland, Sweden, Greenland, Norway, Poland and Ukraine. However, these deposits have a complex “spiderweb-like” mineral assemblage. Without selective blasting, selective fragmentation and pre-concentration technologies to separate the Ti-rich ilmenite grains from the V-bearing magnetite, these deposits are not economically viable. Supported by a bespoke forensic geometallurgy, AVANTIS develops a novel selective-blasting approach that allows for rock excavation with increased mineral liberation at the blasting stage, and reduced energy demand in the crushing and grinding stages. Likewise, AVANTIS designs tailored, water-free and water-lean pre-concentration technologies that can produce two distinct pre-concentrates: ilmenite-rich, Ti-pre-concentrate and ilmenite-free, V-pre-concentrate. The water-lean method is also tailored to process V/Ti-bearing mining wastes from historical as well as current operations. The resulting flowsheets have a low net consumption of water and reduced GHG emissions during extraction.

The project coordinator at AGH is prof. Adam Piestrzyński.

General information about the project:

• Funding: HORIZON-CL4-2023-RESILIENCE-01-02
• Implementation period: 11.2023 – 11.2027 (48 months)
• Consortium: KU Leuven (Coordinator, BE), University of Oulu (FI), Geological Survey of Finland (FI), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NO), Technical University of Crete (GR), AGH University of Krakow (PL), Technical University of Madrid (ES), Titania (NO), Proxis (PL), IMA Engineering (FI), Otanmäki Mine (Associated Partner, FI), Strategic Explorations (Associated Partner, FI), Australian Titanium (Associated Partner, AU)