Mandate:
To create value for the Canadian underground hard-rock mining sector through accelerating the commercialization of targeted innovations.
Vision:
To help sustain existing mines, develop new mines and improve the environmental performance of mines.
Mission:
To advance innovations that will help the mining industry to: find more ore, mine ore more effectively and safely, generate more value from mines, have a more benign impact on the environment and, have a more beneficial impact on communities.
CEMI is Canada’s leading source of Mining Innovation. We develop innovations to help the mining industry:
- find more ore
- mine ore more effectively and safely
- generate more value from mines
- resulting in a more benign impact on the environment
Established in 2007, CEMI’s mandate is to lead step-change innovation by introducing new practices, procedures, tools, techniques and technologies to help generate a significant improvement in the performance of mines.
CEMI understands that innovation is essential for the longevity of the metal mining industry.
Mining Innovation will help to:
- Improve the cost-effectiveness of mining: utilize less time and fewer resources during the mineral production process to create measurable gains.
- Increase the rate of ore-body discovery: reduce the time from discovery to production.
- Manage the impact of mining on the environment: reduce the impact on the natural environment; clean mining technology to reduce the cost of long-term intervention; reduce attendant liabilities and accelerate final reclamation.
CEMI’s Innovation Equation: Innovation = R + D + I + C
(R=Research, D=Demonstration, I=Implementation, C=Commercialization)
Areas of expertise
CEMI delivers technical solutions to the mining industry through advancing innovation and commercialization. CEMI works with networked solution teams to coordinate technical and commercial integration. CEMI has expertise in optimizing an innovations’ impact on Return on Investment (ROI), expertise in accelerating the time to first revenue, expertise in ensuring reduced up-front capital investment requirements to bring innovations into operations. This expertise contributes to improving the NPV of mines.
The focus of CEMI’s Mining Innovation projects address issues currently faced by the mining industry: declining grades, increasing depth, increasing remoteness from infrastructure, increasing productivity for better rates of return, increasing public demand for greater safety and better environmental stewardship.
Our mining innovation work is first, focused on the necessary technical innovations and second, to help accelerate the adoption of innovation within the mining industry.
Technical Areas of Innovation:
- FindMine: To increase the rate of ore discovery and reduce ore discovery costs
- DeepMine: To reduce the risk of deep mining, managing for high rock stress and high temperatures
- ValueMine: To increase mine productivity and positively impact NPV and ROI measures
- SustainMine: To improve the environmental performance and social impact of mining
Acceleration of Innovation:
- BizMine: To help ensure the commercial viability and market acceptance of innovation
Specialized services
CEMI provides the following unique services: Technical evaluations of mining innovations, targeted technical solutions, mining innovation business case evaluations, innovation integration planning, leveraging financial and in-kind resources, identifying and closing innovation gaps, identifying and closing commercialization gaps, development and management of programs and projects to address major industry challenges.
CEMI is Canada’s leading expert in mining innovation. We are a not-for-profit organization. Our aim is to enhance the scope, extent and impact of innovation. We do this to create greater economic value and capacity within the mining industry.
We provide a single point of entry to identify, assess and manage resources and knowledge.
Our on staff technical directors, skillfully direct and co-ordinate step-change innovation within the metal mining industry.
Our innovation work is socially responsible and attuned to needs and expectations of the community.
We implement sound business practices that focus on accountability, efficiency and effectiveness.
We encourage cross-sector collaboration with mining companies, academic institutions, government, technical consultants and forward looking SMEs in Canada and around the world.
We help to develop and nurture the future generations of highly qualified mining personnel and industry leaders by providing training opportunities and in-field access to facilities.
We facilitate industry focused innovation that advances new practices, processes, technology to improve productivity and cost efficiency within the mining industry.
Unique equipment
- UDMN Project: Hydraulic Air Compressor (HAC) Demonstrator
Key Research Priorities
DeepMine: Rock Stress & Heat Management Active
This priority area focuses on advancing the development of new technologies and processes to ensure safe, profitable mining at depth, with a focus on risk mitigation, mechanized underground excavation, and productivity enhancement.
- Rock stress risk reduction; improve the control of stability in deep underground excavations
- Energy reduction: the 40% Mine; improve the energy consumption profile of deep mines
- Novel methods of material transport and productivity; increase the rates of development and production in mines
- Improved human health; use human centered approach to improve environment in deep mines
Key Topic(s)
Reduce technical risk
Partners & Collaborators
Operating mines, SMEs, service providers, academic institutions (colleges, universities), governments, investors, research centres, innovation centres
Benefits
- Developing Highly Qualified People to address deep underground mining challenges
- Develop solutions to enable deep mining
- Overcome the commercialization challenges for innovators
- Accelerate the development of targeted deep mining solutions
- Position Canada as a global leader in advancing deep mining solutions
- To enable Canadian mines to extend operations
- Attract future investments into the Canadian mineral sector
- Create new businesses (SMEs)
- Grow existing SMEs
- Create opportunities for export development
ValueMine: Mine Productivity Active
Step change strategic demonstration projects in the areas of Mine Process Engineering and Mine Design to significantly improve productivity, safety and performance.
Key Topic(s)
Increase operational efficiency, impact NPV and ROI
Partners & Collaborators
Operating mines, SMEs, service providers, academic institutions (colleges, universities), governments, investors, research centres, innovation centres
Benefits
- Impact ROI
- Improve productivity
- Increase safety
- Increase NPV
SustainMine: Environment & Sustainability Active
CEMI supports demonstration projects that will lead to more environmentally benign results and better stewardship of mineral resources. The current strategy is to seek and leverage funding to initiate demonstration projects for novel techniques for the full and final remediation of mine waste and mine waste water.
Key Topic(s)
Reduce mine waste impact
Partners & Collaborators
Operating mines, SMEs, service providers, academic institutions (colleges, universities), governments, investors, research centres, innovation centres
Benefits
- Initiatives to develop comprehensive remote monitoring packages for tailings management facilities (TMF) to: monitor potential geotechnical instability of containment structures; anticipate potential for over-and under-supply of water for aqueous cover to the tailings; and improve the reliability of performance of tailings management facilities, reducing the risk of environmental impact
- To reduce potential long-term liabilities for mining operations by eliminating potential sources of Acid Mine Drainage or Metal Leaching to produce benign waste products
- Initiatives to improve the recovery of metals from mine waste and waste water and potentially lead to a significant reduction of the footprint from mine waste and waste water
- Initiatives to reduce environmental impacts from relic mine sites through improved treatment processes that allow recovery of saleable metals to offset long-term operating costs for treatment facilities
FindMine: Exploration Active
This innovation priority focuses on the implementation of step-change innovation demonstration projects in the area of exploration (new deposits, expanded mines, and mineral resource studies) and geophysics, both on surface and in underground exploration, is strategically important to mining sustainability.
Key Topic(s)
- Increase ore discovery at lower cost
Partners & Collaborators
- Operating mines
- SMEs
- Service providers
- Academic institutions (colleges, universities)
- Governments
- Investors
- Research centres
- Innovation centres
Benefits
- Find new ore bodies
- Increase mining revenues
- Job creation
Key Projects, Programs and Initiatives
Ultra Deep Mining Network (UDMN) Active
The Ultra Deep Mining Network (UDMN) aims to become the leading expert in Ultra-Deep (below 2.5km) research and innovation and to solve the challenges that impact resource extraction in these environments. By supporting solution providers capable of creating the industry-needed tools and technologies in the short term, it will lead the way in helping ultra-deep mines to operate more effectively and safely, generate more value, improve the human environment and enhance mine productivity.
Benefits
- Developing Highly Qualified People to address deep underground mining challenges
- Develop solutions to enable deep mining
- Close the commercialization gap
- Accelerate the development of targeted deep mining solutions
- Position Canada as a global leader in advancing deep mining solutions
- To enable Canadian mines to extend operations
- Attract future investments into the Canadian mineral sector
- Create new businesses (SMEs)
- Grow existing SMEs
- Create opportunities for export development
Areas of focus
The UDMN has four areas of focus:
- Rock stress risk reduction; improve the control of stability in deep underground excavations
- Energy reduction: the 40% Mine; improve the energy consumption profile of deep mines
- Novel methods of material transport and productivity; increase the rates of development and production in mines
- Improved human health; use human centered approach to improve environment in deep mines
Partners & Collaborators
Canada’s federal government, Ontario provincial government, municipal governments, research organizations, innovation centres, operating mines, mining supply and service providers (small to medium sized enterprises), service providers (consulting companies, legal, business services)
Mining Value from Waste Active
The concept of tailings reprocessing is not new. However, due to technical, policy and regulatory complexities, successes have been limited. The recovery of metal values from tailings is generally viewed as the primary incentive, but is unlikely to be successful unless it is combined with a concomitant reduction in environmental liabilities and the development of downstream market opportunities for tailings products. CanmetMINING is developing an initiative called “Mining Value from Waste”, which aims at bringing together the Canadian R&D community to develop a more cohesive and sustained effort to develop demonstrable reprocessing technologies to address a variety of mine wastes. While currently principally focused on tackling the enormous existing and historic tailings liabilities, it is expected that this effort will grow and eventually transition to include processing opportunities for eliminating or vastly decreasing the generation of new tailings.
Benefits
Deriving economic values from mine waste, reducing liabilities asociated with mine waste
Areas of focus
- Mine Closure
- Tailings Reprocessing
- Flotation
- Regulations
- Tailings Management
- Mineral Processing