SERENE

A solution for water balance management in mining

About the project

Aim: SERENE project aims at piloting and validating an innovative mine water balance management solution to achieve a dynamic, predictive water balance control capability, reduce water related risks, and increase water recycling.

Background: Mining industry needs a massive amount of water for ore processing. This implies risks and impacts for mining companies and local communities, both in water scarce areas -due to potential conflicts in water use- and in water-rich regions -due to huge water volumes to be managed. In addition, quality of water discharged from the sites and preservation of the status of local water resources are essential for sustainable mining.

In practice: The project foresees the upscaling of a water balance management system for mine sites, composed of remote sensing, Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics. The combination of existing technologies with new ones developed during the project enables real time monitoring of water flows at mine sites, addressing water quality and quantity and the mine hydrogeological cycle.

GreenDelta in the project

In SERENE, GreenDelta is responsible for the sustainability assessment of the novel water balance management system in order to investigate and communicate potential positive and negative impacts deriving from the implementation of the new technologies. The study of the potential impacts addresses all three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social and economic). Influence of an improved water balance management on factors affecting mining acceptance – hence towards a Social License to Operate (SLO) – is also investigated for Nordic countries.

Links and resources

Project duration: 2018-2019

This research has received funding from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, under Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

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