OUR MISSION
To develop, organise & implement problem-driven, science-deep research & future-oriented education, contributing to the environmentally friendly production & recycling of metals, minerals & engineered materials, supporting (…) a climate-friendly, circular-economy. Read more >





A new paradigm to counter climate change










News

Ben Gilliams: “Pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy are like yin and yang”
Following a 25-year VP-level career at Umicore, Ben Gilliams has decided to make a remarkable career switch. On January 9, Ben started as Senior Valorisation Director at SOLVOMET ISC, one of SIM² KU Leuven’s innovation flagships.

The Twelve Principles of Circular Hydrometalllurgy
The SOLVOMET Group is delighted to announce the publication of its long-awaited position paper “The Twelve Principles of Circular Hydrometalllurgy” in the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy.

Top submerged lance gas injection technology for metal production & recycling
SIM² KU Leuven researchers and their co-authors published a review on the fundamental flow physics of top-submerged lance (TSL) gas injection technology/process in Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B.

Purification of Ge(IV) in milliflow reactors
SIM2 KU Leuven researchers demonstrated that the dilution of the ionic liquid [A336][HSO4] improves the hydrodynamics and the mass-transfer performance of the purification of Ge(IV) by solvent extraction in milliflow reactors.
Meet our SIM² colleagues

Ben Gilliams: “Pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy are like yin and yang”
Following a 25-year VP-level career at Umicore, Ben Gilliams has decided to make a remarkable career switch. On January 9, Ben started as Senior Valorisation Director at SOLVOMET ISC, one of SIM² KU Leuven’s innovation flagships.

Understanding the origin of critical metals associated to hydrous magmas
With a background in igneous petrology and magmatic processes, Olivier Namur recently started as an Assistant Professor at SIM² KU Leuven. Find out about Olivier’s exciting research in this new SIM² interview.
Research Results

Classification of aluminium scrap by LIBS and RGB/D image fusion
KU Leuven’s LCE research group (SIM² KU Leuven) has demonstrated how data fusion of LIBS spectra and color (RGB) and Depth (D) images can improve the sorting of post-consumer aluminium scrap into commercially-interesting fractions.

You Only Demanufacture Once (YODO): WEEE retrieval using unsupervised learning
The KU Leuven’s lifecycle engineering (LCE) research group (SIM² – KU Leuven) developed a method that enables robotic demanufacturing system to learn from prior demanufacturing actions performed on identical product models. The work was published in Resources, Conservation and Recycling.