On 6 September 2016 the official recruitment event took place in Leuven for EU Horizon 2020 MSCA-ETN NEW-MINE, the first ever Horizon 2020 project dealing with Enhanced Landfill Mining (see Press Release). From an initial list of 182 eligible NEW-MINE candidates, 29 were preselected for the Recruitment Event where they were interviewed by 20 NEW-MINE Supervisors. After a lengthy deliberation the Recruitment Committee selected the 15 winning candidates, who are set to start their research around November 2016. No positions were left open. The official kick-off meeting will take place in Leuven on 7 February 2017. The meeting will be combined with a General Assembly meeting of the EURELCO network.
Public Abstract NEW-MINE: Europe has somewhere between 150,000 and 500,000 landfill sites, with an estimated 90% of them being “non-sanitary” landfills, predating the EU Landfill Directive of 1999. These older landfills tend to be filled with municipal solid waste and often lack any environmental protection technology. In order to avoid future environmental and health problems, many of these landfills will soon require expensive remediation measures. This situation might appear bleak, but it does present us with an exciting opportunity for a combined resource-recovery and remediation strategy, which will drastically reduce future remediation costs, reclaim valuable land, while at the same time unlocking valuable resources. However, the widespread adoption of Enhanced Landfill Mining (ELFM) in the EU, as envisaged by NEW-MINE, urgently requires skilled scientists, engineers, economists and policy makers who can develop cost-effective, environmentally friendly ELFM practices and regulatory frameworks. All this demands a European commitment to concerted, inter- and transdisciplinary research and innovation. NEW-MINE trains 15 earlystage researchers (ESRs) in all aspects of landfill mining, in terms of both technological innovation and multi-criteria assessments. The technological innovation follows a value-chain approach, from advanced landfill exploration, mechanical processing, plasma/solar/hybrid thermochemical conversion and upcycling, while the multi-criteria assessment methods allow to compare combined resource-recovery/remediation ELFM methods with the “DoNothing”, “Classic remediation” and “Classic landfill mining with (co-)incineration” scenarios. By training the ESRs in scientific, technical and soft skills, they become highly sought-after scientists and engineers for the rapidly emerging landfill-mining and broader raw-materials industries of Europe.
Beneficiaries: KU Leuven, RWTH Aachen, UGent, Montanuniversität Leoben, Unversity of Padova, ETH Zürich, Linköping University, KTH Stockholm, Shanks, Italcementi
Partner Organisations: ScanArc, Stadler, JMR (Group Machiels), Stadler, BAV, University of Antwerp, Cranfield University
Dr. Ir. Peter Tom Jones – General Coordinator MSCA-ETN NEW-MINE
Senior Research Manager Urban/Landfill Mining, KU Leuven Industrial Research Fund (IOF)
General Coordinator European Enhanced Landfill Mining Consortium (EURELCO)
Department Materials Engineering, KU Leuven
Kasteelpark Arenberg 44, BE-3001 Leuven, Belgium
Tel: +32 (0) 486 83 64 94
Email: peter.jones@kuleuven.be
SIM² KU Leuven: set.kuleuven.be/mrc/sim2/
RARE³ KU Leuven: http://www.kuleuven.rare3.eu/
EURELCO: www.eurelco.org
More info here: 15 PhD positions EU H2020 MSCA-ETN NEW-MINE (PDF)
