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Research & Development Request

ERA-MIN 2 Call – Exploration. Looking for a mining company or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) provider

Country of Origin: Spain
Reference Number: RDES20170425001
Publication Date: 25 April 2017

Summary

Spanish SME leader in chemical analysis is preparing a proposal for ERA-MIN 2 on the subtopic 1 “Supply of raw materials from exploration and mining” - 1.1 Exploration. The main objective of the project is to develop an innovative, portable platform for mineral ore exploration (Ni, Zn, Cu, Fe) based in the detection of a characteristic vapour emanated from ores. Potential partners are Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) providers or mining/exploration companies. ERA-MIN 2 deadline is 5th May 2017

Description

Spanish leading SME in chemical analysis is preparing a proposal for ERA-MIN 2 “Research & Innovation Programme on Raw Materials to foster Circular Economy” on the subtopic 1 “Supply of raw materials from exploration and mining” - 1.1 Exploration



ERA-MIN Joint Call 2017 will address three segments of the non-energy, non-agricultural raw materials: Metallic, Construction and Industrial minerals to use in products and returning them into the product cycle at the end of their use, keeping in mind the need for a sustainable and responsible industrial supply of primary resources to feed the circular economy.



In the past, trained dogs have been successfully tested for exploration purposes although their industrial use has been discarded due to operative and cost issues.



The main objective of the project is to develop an innovative, portable platform for mineral ore exploration (Ni, Zn, Cu, Fe) based on the detection of a characteristic vapour emanated from ores using:

-	A relatively light, highly autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) drone for vapour sampling with payload of 5 kg.

-	An analyser to be used on-site delivering immediate results based upon revolutionary company’s analyser technology.



This analyser system improves the sensitivity of dogs in several orders of magnitude and preliminary laboratory trials are fully positive.



SME is looking for a drone provider or a mining/exploration company.



EoI deadline: 3rd May 2017

Call deadline: 5th May 2017



ERA-MIN 2017 is a two-stage call. This deadline is for the preproposal stage.

Advantages and Innovations

- Reliability of > 90%.

- Extremely fast scanning capability.

- Costs of exploration reduced: aprox.100 times costs cut versus current methods.

- Improved sensitivity versus current methods.

Requested partner

- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) drone providers (specially helicopters) with experience developing light and autonomous drones. Their activities would be to develop the platform, integration with the analyser to do vapour sampling with payload of 5 kg



- Another possible partner could be mining or exploration companies (Ni, Zn, Cu, Fe) to assess a pilot to test the technology on field.



ERA-MIN 2 is decentralised funding. Each country/region has its own regulation, please check conditions on organisation involved here: https://www.era-min.eu/system/files/funding_regulations_era-min_joint_call_2017_5.pdf

Dissemination Countries

Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Turkey