In December 2007, a joint meeting of the Sixteenth International Symposium on Mine Planning and Equipment Selection and the Tenth International Symposium on Environmental Issues and Waste Management in Energy and Mineral Production was held in Bangkok, Thailand. Professor P.N. Martens, Director and Head of the Institute of Mining Engineering at the RWTH Aachen University was the invited luncheon speaker. The title of his presentation was Raw Materials-Younger Than Ever: A European Perspective. Space limitations do not permit us to publish the full text of his presentation however, a few selected but self contained paragraphs convey his thoughts.
Professor Martens' presentation dealt with the past, present and future status of the mineral raw materials industry. Given below is the text of what he had to say about future developments in this industry.
“Presumably there won't be any big innovative steps in conventional mining in the very near future. We will see a constant optimization of processes. In particular in the area of open pit mining, we will have an ongoing growth of the equipment. It will play an increasingly important role, not only in the field of automation and autonomisation of equipment, but also in supporting management in decision making at the face, in the operation and in automation. Advances in rock mechanics will make an important contribution particularly to the implementation of mass-mining methods in underground mining. Processing of raw materials will move near to the face. There appears to be a tendency towards two types of mining methods- mass mining and highly selective mining.
With an increase in land use conflicts, we will experience an increasing social pressure to that effect that raw materials production as a tendency is forced to move underground including processing and other facilities. “Out of sight is out of mind.” And we might find a tendency to move towards smaller scale mining, reducing the footprints of raw materials extraction.
But mining will also expand into new locations. Deep sea mining on copper-zinc-gold deposits in a depth of 2000m out of the coast of Papua New Guinea is close to being economically feasible. We will find key hole mining, with equipment connected to a kind of umbilical cord. As processing technology is developing further we see that increasingly complex ores will be treated. Bio leaching and insitu gasification will come. And looking at transport cost for man and material to Moon and Mars and back it is only logical to assume that mining for water, energy, missile fuel and material for shelters is not a totally weird idea.”