Cornwall has the longest tradition for providing the mineral needs of society, from the bronze age need for tin to todays use of kaolin for many applications. A consortium of MIRO, IMERYS and the University of Birmingham are using a TSB grant to bring this right up to date.
The granite that forms the terrain and mineral wealth of Cornwall is known to contain lithium, till now, there has been no rational economic reason for extraction. But world demand for lithium is rapidly increasing as the metal is used in a number of high tech applications, mainly associated with batteries for electric vehicles and other eco-applications. As demand grows, the value of lithium is increasing and new supplies are sought.
The University of Brimingham has developed novel processing to recover lithium from the types of minerals that exist in Cornwall. The project to develop this processing will allow extraction of lithium at IMERYS' sites in Cornwall to be an economically viable proposition, thus helping progress the green economy and promoting economic growth for the area. The science developed will also provide further opportunity for innovation.
Department for Science, Innovation & Technology
Imerys seeks to demonstrate and create an impact validation report for a resource efficiency solution for the UK chemical industry: sustainable additives for polymer films. The project will gather granular evidence on Imerys' patented innovation---a glass-based additive for plastics manufacturing. \>90% of the UK's manufactured goods rely on polymers: fundamental building blocks of plastics used across packaging, construction, and automotive, sectors. A resource and energy‑intensive industry, owing in part to chemical feedstock sourcing, polymer production generates ~3.3% of global emissions per annum. Around 460 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year, requiring roughly 20 million tonnes of additives to improve processing and performance. Additive demand is set to double by 2050, increasing environmental impact unless more efficient, sustainable solutions are adopted.
Anti-block additives are crucial to produce polymer film used in food and industrial packaging. Without them, polymer sheets stick together during production and handling, slowing manufacturing lines, complicating packaging processes, and reducing film quality. Anti-block additives work by creating microscopic surface roughness, reducing the contact area between adjacent sheets and preventing adhesion. Current anti‑block additives are primarily mineral‑based (talc or calcium carbonate). While effective, these require energy‑intensive mining and processing, including calcination in temperatures of up to 1,000 °C, contributing to the 4--7 % of global CO₂ emissions linked to mineral extraction. No recycled, low‑energy alternative currently exists on the market.
Imerys is addressing this challenge by producing the first anti‑block additive made entirely from recycled glass. Only 21% of clear glass is currently recycled worldwide, resulting in approximately 130 million tonnes of unused glass waste in landfill per annum. Imerys' novel additive process takes the glass cullets and further crushes and mills them into a fine powder with controlled surface properties, ideal for polymer dispersion and function. These particles create the microscopic surface texture needed to prevent blocking in polymers. This process offers equivalent performance to mineral additives but with far lower energy use and carbon emissions.
By replacing mined minerals with recycled glass, Imerys's innovation cuts environmental impact and diverts waste from landfill, supporting a more circular economy. A key output of this project will be the impact validation report, detailing carbon and energy savings to evaluate lifecycle impacts and commercial scale-up potential of Imerys' innovation. The project's sustainability results will also be verified through a life cycle assessment, positioning this additive as a first-of-its-kind for sustainable, high‑performance additives in the polymer industry.
As the global population and economies continue to grow at alarming rates, this places ever-increasing demands for metals needed to manufacture everyday electronics, life-saving medical equipment and for the future of clean energy technologies (i.e., solar panels, wind turbines, batteries for electric vehicles etc). The amounts required for the five key metals (_i.e., lithium, Nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earth elements_-REEs) will grow exponentially over the next few decades.
Conventional mining practices use high consumption of energy and chemicals for metal mobilisation, and to ensure profitability, industries tend to use high-grade metal ores as raw material, which is leading to rapid depletion. These mining practices result in millions of tons of waste produced as mine-tailings, which reside as dams scarring the landscapes of the world. This volume of waste material is also increasing due to declining ore grades (_as low ore grades produce significantly more tailings waste_). However, mine-tailings still contain valuable metals, reprocessing of which can turn this perceived waste into alternate valuable resource.
Transformational change is now possible in the field of metal extraction from mine-waste tailings by establishing novel Biomanufacturing processes. Intersecting the field of waste mineral processing (i.e., amorphisation of waste mineral ores) with microbial bioreactor systems holds enormous potential to address the future of clean metal manufacturing, which also focus on the circular economy from the outset.
This project consortium will establish sustainable microbial biomanufacturing processes to extract key important metals from mine-waste tailings. This 5Ms project will deliver an optimised microbial bioreactor demonstrator model and will show how the biomass produced and processed (spherical) particles will be utilised for secondary market applications to complete the circular economy loop, complete with Life Cycle and technoeconomic analysis.
This project will improve resource efficiency and symbiosis between UK foundation industries by utilising waste derived clay from the ceramics sector to produce high value innovative cement formulations. It will develop industrial connections and enhance UK supply chains by providing new low carbon resource efficient products for the UK construction industry. In doing so it will help to secure UK jobs and GVA.
Clay is a raw material common to three of the UK foundation industries; cement, ceramics and paper. Higher-grade clays such as China clay are extracted for the manufacture of white ceramics and paper. Medium-grade clays are extracted to manufacture ceramics such as bricks and tiles, whereas lower-grade clays are extracted and utilised by the UK cement industry to produce Portland cement clinker.
Waste derived clay material is generated during the extraction of higher-grade clays and through production and use of medium-grade clays (waste bricks/brick fines).
In this project, waste derived clay from several different sources will be characterised and tested for the properties useful for cement and concrete production. Waste derived clays will be prepared using two different heating methods to enable comparisons of the resulting properties. These methods are a rotary kiln, a commonly available technology and 'flash heating', a new and innovative heating technique not yet trialled in the UK.
The prepared material will be expertly formulated into cement compositions which will be tested for conformity to EU/UK standards. Concrete mixes using these clay cements will be developed and optimised with mix enhancing chemical admixtures. Both fresh and hardened properties will be examined to maximise the market potential of the new cements.
The information from the testing and pilot work will be presented to the national standards body to modify the national concrete standards to remove a barrier to market for these new cements.
Deployment of these new cements on the UK market could reduce waste by 1.4 million tonnes and reduce the embodied CO2 of cement by around 10-30% compared to the market leading CEM I cement.
The China Clay (or kaolin) industry in Cornwall has been in operation for nearly 275 years since its discovery and was once a mainstay of UK industry, producing raw materials for Britain's potteries and paper industry. English China Clays was once a household name in Britain and was formerly the world's largest producer of china clay, before being sold to French company Imerys in 1999. The industry still forms a significant part of UK primary industry, employing over 750 people in mid-Cornwall and contributing £92m/year into the Cornish economy (Imerys statistics July 2020). Unfortunately, the china clay industry has long been in decline due to reducing demand for printing and writing papers and the emergence of competing kaolin sources and other minerals overseas.
China clay in Cornwall is largely sourced from decomposed granite, a rock that also contains lithium minerals in the form of lithium mica. The lithium potential of the china clay region in Cornwall was outlined in a British Geological Survey (BGS) report of 1987 and the possibility of lithium extraction from this source is currently being evaluated by Cornish Lithium Ltd -- the lead partner in this grant application.
The project consortium will include Imerys, Cornish Lithium and HSSMI and aims to enhance resilience of the Cornish china clay industry by evaluating the economic viability of extracting lithium from minerals that occur in the same rock as china clay -- thus increasing the resource efficiency of the mined rock, making this vital Cornish industry more internationally competitive and securing a domestic supply of lithium that is vital to the transition to renewable energy and a zero-carbon economy. This project takes an innovative approach to evaluating cutting-edge lithium extraction techniques and developing new processes to align co-production of lithium with Imerys' current kaolin production, demonstrating the commercial possibility to produce a vital new metal for the UK whilst making the Foundation Industry more resilient.
Lithium is critical due to its vital importance in the transition to renewable energy/zero-carbon economy. The UK aspires to be a leader in battery and electric vehicle (EV) production and technology but faces a major hurdle given that there is no secure domestic supply of lithium for battery manufacture: an issue noted recently by the Prime Minister. Co-production of lithium from minerals found in china clay waste (current and historic material) will increase resource efficiency by reducing waste and generating additional revenue sources.
IMERYS and Birmingham University are collaborating on a project to use state of the art monitoring equipment to view the internal workings of high energy grinding mills. Supporter by G. T. Jones and Co (a well established Cornish engineering business) and the Minerals Industry Research Organiseation, the project will apply Positron Emission Partical Tracking (PEPT) to see through the structure and shell of the grinding mill and track the motion of individual grinding media within the mill. The facility at Birmingham is one of only two such laboratories world wide. Through the information gathered in these experiments engineers will be able to modify the operation of existing production facilites leading to a reduction of the energy required to manufaccture products and also an improvement in the products made. The team will then go on to apply the increased understanding to making new products with novel properties.
Knowledge Transfer Partnership
To characterise the occurrence of critical metals (Nb/Ta/REE/W/Sn) within the china clay operations and evaluate processing strategies and the viability of extraction as a by-product.