Proceedings of EMPRC 2018

Auszug

Preface
These are the Proceedings of the 1st European Mineral Processing and Recycling Congress – EMPRC 2018 taking place from June 25 to 26 in Essen, Germany. This new congress complements the program of GDMB with an event, which focuses primarily on physical and physico-chemical processing of primary and secondary raw materials.  
EMPRC reflects Europe’s reinvigorated interest in raw materials. Reasons for this development are, among others, highly volatile metal prices within the last decade, formation of monopolies and oli-gopolies for some raw materials, state run raw material policies of some big producers, high pace of technology development as well as political uncertainties. Additionally, there is an increasing awareness that many future-orientated technologies like electromobility cannot be implemented without an assured raw material supply. For example, some required raw materials such as cobalt and rare earth elements, which are used in lithium-ion batteries and electric motors, show a higher concentration of supply and country risks than oil.     
As Europe’s situation is characterized on the one hand by large industrial output and therefore high raw material consumption, and on the other hand by a limited number of own deposits, the import dependency is generally high. Therefore, besides the processing of primary raw materials, the con-ference will also focus on the processing of secondary raw materials and the associated specific challenges.
The top-class congress program comprises 6 plenary lectures and more than 30 technical presenta-tions from industry, research institutions, and associations. With presentations ranging from current developments and practical examples in comminution, classifying and sorting over raw material management for electromobility up to application of mechanochemistry in metallurgy, nanotechnol-ogy and medicine, a wide variety of topics will be addressed.
I want to thank all authors, my colleagues in the Scientific Committee, reviewers and chair persons for their valuable contributions to the success of EMPRC 2018.