As Canada works to boost the country's production of critical minerals needed to support renewable energy including lithium for electronic vehicles and rare earth metals for solar panels a team of University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers is helping the mining sector work smarter thanks to breakthrough innovations such as excavating shovels equipped with sensors and more efficient, high-tech ore crushing methods.
Their groundbreaking work to improve sustainability in mining has earned Bern Klein, a mineral process engineer and professor in the Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering at UBC, the Mitacs Award for Exceptional Leadership Professor, awarded by Mitacs, a national innovation organization that fosters growth by solving business challenges with research solutions from academic institutions and supported by the Government of British Columbia. The award will be presented at a ceremony at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on November 22.
Klein who has mentored 70 Mitacs interns over two decades is being recognized for cultivating a culture of innovation that has culminated in several breakthrough technologies, most notably cutting-edge sensors that are transforming the way mined minerals are sorted and classified. Now marketed by Vancouver-based MineSense Technologies, a company he co-founded with a former PhD student, the intelligent sensors are retrofitted on existing excavating shovels, allowing operators to make informed decisions in real time about the quality of material being mined, shovelful by shovelful.
"This technology represents a step change for the industry, allowing mines to recover valuable metal that would otherwise have ended up in the waste dump while also avoiding the costly problem of sending low-grade material on for processing," said Klein. "It enables them to use their resources more efficiently because the quality of material going to the processing plant is higher."
A shovel at a copper mine, for example, picks up 70 tonnes of material at a time. Using the sensors, copper content is instantly predicted and the results are displayed on a screen in the excavator cab, so operators can quickly decide where to divert the material. Traditional mining methods are less accurate because they rely on orebody models to make decisions, often leading to misclassification of materials.
Klein is currently collaborating with the UBC physics department to advance new sensors that will perform the same digital sorting and classification to help with the recovery of rare earth metals and lithium, needed to support Canada's renewable energy goals. Though he appreciates the recognition of his work, he is also quick to point out that he shares the honour with his Mitacs interns, many of whom have gone on to be leaders in their fields.
"The real benefit of the Mitacs program is the straightforward and streamlined process they've developed to quickly pull together the industry projects, talented students and funding required to advance innovation in Canada," he said.
"As researchers, there's only so much we can do in our lab," he added. "To advance our ideas, we rely on industry partners to provide guidance, information and data that would be difficult to obtain otherwise, and Mitacs facilitates that collaboration."
As part of the Mitacs award, Klein is also being recognized for his students' work to help mines significantly reduce their energy consumption by advancing new crushing methods, like high pressure grinding rolls and the use of carbon dioxide at high pressures to cause fracturing. His team estimates that energy usage could be reduced by as much as 50 to 60% if conventional methods are replaced with newer, more efficient technology.
"Roughly 4% of all power generated in British Columbia goes to supporting the crushing and grinding of rocks," explained Klein. "Implementing new technology represents a significant change for them, so part of our role is to develop the engineering approaches and methods required to support it."
The Mitacs Award for Exceptional Leadership Professor is presented to an academic supervisor with an exemplary record of developing collaborations with industry and community organizations, providing valuable research and training experiences to their interns, and initiating research projects with significant outcomes through their Mitacs funding. Mitacs is supported by funding from the Government of Canada and provincial and territorial governments across the country.
Klein is one of nine Mitacs award winners nationally, chosen from thousands of researchers who take part in Mitacs programs each year. The remaining eight recipients were recognized for outstanding innovation, commercialization or exceptional leadership in other areas of research.
In congratulating the winners, Mitacs CEO John Hepburn reflected on Mitacs' 25-year history of providing Canadian innovators with opportunities for experiential skills development through strategic partnerships between industry, government and academia. "Mitacs is honoured to play a pivotal role in empowering industry leaders across Canada to foster game-changing ideas, and we couldn't be more pleased to celebrate their significant achievements with these awards," Hepburn said.
For more information about the Mitacs awards and a full list of winners, visit www.mitacs.ca/newsroom .
