Urban Mining (Masters)
4 semesters summer recruitment
Subject description:
Urban mining is the recovery of valuable raw materials from used products (e.g. vehicles, electronic equipment), installations, buildings and various infrastructures. It is a term for the recycling of secondary raw materials, which allows you to see valuable deposits wherever people have left traces of their activities. “Mines” for urban mining are all man-made creations that are no longer in use. Although Urban Mining appeared in scientific terminology as early as the 1980s, it is a phenomenon describing one of the fastest growing global trends. Urban mining is an interdisciplinary research area that includes various methods of obtaining valuable substances from anthropogenic waste.
Students are able to:
- identify and assess the raw material potential from the stream of anthropogenic waste from current streams and from old deposits
- assess qualitatively and quantitatively the basic parameters of using these potentials, taking into account zero-waste and low-emission strategies
- plan detailed studies of processing, taking into account the physical, chemical and biological processes necessary from the point of view of social demand for these raw materials, using good circular economy practices
- identify and evaluate the necessary infrastructure, including mining and technological and technical infrastructure, to be used for the needs of municipal mining
- know the principles of designing processing installations, taking into account the current state of knowledge and technology
- define and implement an investment project and evaluate its technical, technological and economic parameters
- critically evaluate the propose solutions and perform the required analyzes along with technological calculations
Work placements:
- research institutions
- state and local government administration responsible for waste management
- enterprises
- design offices
- consulting companies
- municipal waste management plants