Project: Forecasting and Assessing Europe’s Strategic and Raw Materials Needs
| Acronym | FRAME (Reference Number: GeoE.171.010) |
| Duration | 01/07/2018 - 30/06/2021 |
| Project Topic | Inevitably, Europe shows a growing and accelerating consumption of mineral commodities, which at the moment the question whether supply to meet demand is adequate or not cannot be answered with any certainty because secure supply is a matter of knowing the resources and the ability to exploit them with respect to sustainability. Non-energy minerals underpin our modern economy and are essential for manufacturing and renewable “green” energy supply technologies. Many critical and strategic minerals and metals may be collected through recycling of mining related waste materials. However, even with the important contribution from recycling, it will still be necessary to extract them from primary mineral deposits, focusing on applying new technologies for deep exploration and mining, turning low-grade ores to exploitable resources and reducing generation of mining wastes and large tailings by converting them to exploitable resources. Project FRAME (Forecasting and Assessing Europe’s Strategic Raw Materials Needs) is designed to research the critical and strategic raw materials in Europe, in scenarios as described above, by employing sound strategies and a partner base spread far and wide amongst those that have some of these raw materials. Through successful teamwork, there is the expertise and knowledge base to provide a significant innovative contribution towards knowing more about the potential primary deposits, predict new target areas/deposits and recognize the potential in secondary deposits. FRAME is made up of eight work Packages (WP) designed to collect, extract and disseminate strategic and critical mineral data to fill existing knowledge gaps in this field. |
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Project Results (after finalisation) |
- Identify and define the strategic minerals and metals that will make part of the metallogenetic map and related interpretations, focused on the current list of CRM, but considering also the strategic importance of some of those which were among the original candidates, such as phosphate rock, lithium, graphite, cobalt, niobium, tantalum, and others such as selenium, silver, copper, manganese, lead and iron ore. All minerals and metals collected and selected to be part of the metallogenetic map will simply go under the term CRM. - Produce a metallogenetic map and increase the knowledge on the CRM endowments and resource potential in Europe and EU seas. - Better understanding of the ore genetic links between major deposit types and hosted critical mineral and metal associations. Understanding also the mineralizing processes in different environments, including current deep sea, and using this understanding to predict and develop new mineral deposits or deposit types. - Be able to identify conditions and processes involved in the formation of the STR and CRM-potential deposits and develop conceptual models for their formation. - Predictive targeting based on GIS exploration tools, of high potential mineral provinces and mining districts. - Provide potential CRM resource estimates based on the UNECE classification system in close cooperation with RM 1/WP 5 on UNCF system. - Display and distribute the map and description on the Information platform. - Highlight mineral resources criticality to high-tech economy and downstream sectors. |
| Website | visit project website |
| Network | GeoERA |
| Call | GeoERA Cofund Call |