Montana Tech researchers and students travel to Santiago, Chile for international supply chain workshop

Researchers and students from Montana Technological University joined partners from Northwestern University, as well as other academic institutions, scholars, industry leaders and policy experts in exploring ways to bolster international supply chains of critical minerals in sustainable and socially-conscious ways at a workshop held in Santiago, Chile on Sept. 9-10 at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

The workshop was the second in a series hosted by the National Science Foundation Global Center SuReMin: Sustainable, Resilient, Responsible Global Minerals Supply Chain. The NSF Global Center is an international collaboration led by Northwestern University. Partners in the NSF Center includes Montana Technological University; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) – an entity of the University of Queensland (Australia); the Universidad de los Andes, and the Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico). The Center will conduct research and develop educational opportunities to guide the development of a sustainable international minerals supply chain, a pressing challenge due to the increasing demand for useful and usable research that can inform and strengthen decarbonization at the scale and pace required to address climate change. This new center based at Northwestern University is managed in conjunction with the Montana Tech Center for Environmental Remediation and Assessment (CERA).

Montana Tech was represented at the workshop by CERA Director Dr. Robin Bullock, Mechanical Engineering Interim Department Head Dr. Richard LaDouceur, environmental engineering graduate student Matthew Ingersoll and materials science Ph.D. student Max Triepke. Bullock participated on panels discussing the global vision for the Center, a session on workforce development, and presented on Beneficial Reuse of Mine Waste Guidelines and Case Studies. LaDouceur moderated two sessions, “Increasing metals recovery from active mining and other sources” and “Mining Waste Reduction: Valorization, reuse, and improved treatment.” Ingersoll delivered a presentation, “Montana Resources Copper Mine and Recovery of Critical Minerals and Rare Earth Elements from its Waste Water.” Triepke presented a professional poster, “Solar Process Heat Pyrolysis.”  

“I think this is one of the best professional experiences I’ve ever had,” LaDoucer said. “You put a lot of smart people in a room and you feel like you’ve accomplished something. This thing we are trying to accomplish is kind of grand and overwhelming, but if enough people care we can find solutions.”

In addition to academics, the workshop featured policy makers and government officials, including Butte-Silver Bow Planning Director Julia Crain, who gave a presentation titled, “Communicating Clean-up – Engaging the local public in technical decision making.”

“The SuReMin Workshop was incredible and thought provoking,” Crain said. “The diversity of participants challenged me to reconceive my perception of the roles land use planning, public participation, and policy play in meeting the resource supply and environmental challenges ahead of us.  I am optimistic about Butte-Silver Bow’s ability to share our unique perspective informed by our community’s legacy and leadership in mining, technology, and environmental remediation.”

LaDouceur appreciated the diversity of the collaborators in the workshop, including indigenous speakers. Michael Waasegiizhig Price, a traditional ecological knowledge specialist for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission gave a presentation “Indigenous (Anishinaabe) Perspectives from the Great Lakes of North America.” Francisco Mondaca and César Vivar of the Unidad de Medio Ambiente del Consejo de Pueblos Atacameños (Environmental Unit of the Council of Atacameños Peoples) gave a presentation on decolonizing the sciences.

LaDouceur said the presentations gave him a new view of how citizen science and indigenous traditional knowledge can be incorporated in the mineral extraction process to better bridge the gaps between stakeholders in the process of creating new mines.

“Oftentimes the community engagement side on the development of mines, it feels like it’s a box checking thing always done at the end at least from the impacted community’s perspective.  At the workshop, we were asking, ‘How can we do this together, to minimize the impact and make sure the community gets the benefits up front?’”

Ingersoll highlighted similar experiences as high points of the workshop. He said his time at Montana Tech and Montana Resources prepared him to be an active participant. 

“Working for Montana Resources in Butte, Montana for the past few years gave me the needed knowledge and experience to be involved and understand the conversations that were taking place at the workshop,” Ingersoll said. “I related to many topics and saw how some technologies or process changes could be applied to mines like Montana Resources.”

He believes the work done by the Center can lead to better practices in the mining industry.

“I thought the experience was beneficial and powerful,” Ingersoll said. “The work that the Center is trying to accomplish is very important for the future of minerals and supply chains and how they relate to sustainability and current practices. I really enjoyed the collaboration aspect with Chile and Australian members as well as the Northwestern University folks. My overall takeaway was that thinking of the future rather than the present is the only way to solve problems we currently face and will continue to face. SuReMin is a group that is thinking about the future.”

Triepke said the conference made him shift the way he thinks about the future of mining.

“My main takeaway was about the socioeconomic impacts of mining,” Triepke said. “In the past, I have worked with and studied the technical side of mining, where everything is put into a processing or engineering frame of reference and evaluated based on income. However, a lot of the focus was on the socioeconomic impacts, evaluating the mining and tailing facilities in terms of the amount of people, land, and water affected by the operation. Moving away from a carbon-based energy system requires a transition to sustainable and resilient mining to provide necessary critical minerals while minimizing the negative impacts of mining that fall on people, and ecosystems.”

Bullock said that the workshop addressed technical, social and policy aspects of mining, with discussions on how we can move forward to a secure and socially acceptable mineral supply chain. 

“It takes all stakeholders to be included to achieve this goal, and a willingness to work together on the data and resources needed to make best decisions,” Bullock said. “All in the room agreed on the need for critical minerals, but how we achieve this globally – to be responsible during current and future development – this is where a Global Center is best positioned to assist.” 

LaDouceur sees great opportunities for Montana Tech if the Center is fully funded by the National Science Foundation.

“One of the goals for us at Montana Tech is we can take these facilities that we have that are very unique, such as the Underground Mine Education Center, and help train not just mining, environmental, metallurgical and mechanical engineers, but we can also use these facilities to train social scientists, and political scientists that work in these areas to gain knowledge about the mining industry along with its value and impacts,” LaDouceur said.