Developing in the metals of the energy transition, decarbonizing production, producing faster and better, proposing innovative sustainable solutions and preparing Eramet's future... From mines to metals, our research and innovation experts invent value-creating solutions in response to the challenges facing our industry.
Based in Trappes, France, Eramet Ideas is staffed by experts who work closely with site-based operational teams. Eramet Ideas has expertise in mining, extractive metallurgy and recycling, and helps to improve the Group’s short-term operating performance, while developing long-term projects in support of the strategic roadmap.
Eramet Ideas is also the Group’s talent incubator, bringing together experts and young graduates.
For the past four years, Eramet Ideas has been rebuilding itself as an open innovation center based on a commitment to partnerships with institutes, universities, startups and industrial partners.
This approach accelerates the generation of new ideas and access to rare skills, at the same time as pooling risks and sharing costs.
Since 2019, Eramet Ideas has been inviting startups and SMEs from around the world to take part in Open Innovation challenges. Safety, responsible mining, digitalization… these themes attract over fifty participants every year, offering the winning project an endowment to test the solution in the field, and eventually roll it out on a larger scale across the Group’s various sites.
Startup Unusuals won the 2022 challenge with a solution using AI and data processing to automate maintenance and detect anomalies in order to reduce incidents on our railroads.
The solution will be tested during 2023 by Setrag in Gabon.
This center of excellence boasts state-of-the-art tools such as France’s first scanning electron microscope (SEM), equipped with QEMSCAN mineralogical analysis software, as well as pilot and semi-industrial facilities for conducting experimental campaigns from the gram to the ton scale. These experimental tools are enhanced by their digital twins in mineralogy, data science, 3D modeling and design.
Our research teams work hand in hand with the field on short, medium and long-term innovation programs.
The Centenario project in Argentina is based on a high-performance direct lithium extraction process developed by Eramet Ideas in association with IFP Énergies nouvelles (IFPEN). This process offers a number of advantages over the conventional lagoon process, including double the extraction yield, reduced overall water consumption and a production time that can be measured in days rather than months.
The ReLieVe project for recycling lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles was launched in the Eramet Ideas laboratories. A demonstrator is currently being built on the Trappes site. The aim is to validate the efficiency and robustness of the Eramet process on a pre-industrial scale.
Eramet’s roadmap for reducing CO2 emissions depends mainly on decarbonizing ferroalloy production. The first lever is the substitution of fossil-based reducing agents by biomass-based reducing agents. Major R&D efforts are being deployed to characterize and understand these new types of materials, assess their durability and production performance, and carry out substitution tests on a pilot and industrial scale.
160
employees, including 35% women and 65% men of 14 different nationalities
3
pilot halls and associated laboratories for mineralurgy, hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy
28
collaborative projects subsidized
in Europe since 2016,
5 of which have led to major developments for the Group
and 1 of which is in the industrialization phase
150
start-ups with high potential
for the Group
