TU Delft

Delft University of Technology – TU Delft is the largest and the oldest technical university of the Netherlands, with 8 faculties, 2,500 staff members, and over 27,000 students and 6600 employees. TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context. At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values  and we actively engage  to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale.

The faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering (3mE) trains committed engineering students, PhD candidates and post-doctoral researchers in ground-breaking scientific research in the fields of mechanical, maritime and materials engineering. The group of Metals Production Refining and Recycling (MPRR) is part of the Department Materials Science and Engineering, within the faculty 3mE.

MPRR conducts innovation research and education in sustainable metals production and recycling. The MPRR group contributes to “closing the metals cycle”. The group’s research focuses on the development of more efficient and sustainable technologies for metals extraction and recycling industry. The research of the group helps to the sustainable production and supply of metals with minimum environmental impact. Greening the ironmaking and steelmaking with various de-carbonization innovations are, among others, the top priority now and in the near future. TU Delft is a full and active partner in the EIT RawMaterials. MPRR group is also a founding member of PROMETIA (Minerals processing and extractive metallurgy for mining and recycling innovation association) on behalf of TU Delft.

The MPRR group has fully equipped labs for pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and materials characterization and analysis. Key facilities include lab-scale special purpose furnaces for H₂ reduction, carburization of DRI, scrap refining; continuous off-gas analyzer (mass spectrometer) and thermal analyzer (TGA/DTA/DSC). The group has also a modern hydrometallurgy lab with a series of leaching, solution purification and metal precipitation facilities including electro-winning and electro-refining devices. Molten salt electrolysis could also be conducted at the Pyrometallurgy lab. There are a number of modelling tools in the group, such as thermodynamic software (FactSage, HSC Chemistry) and computational packages (CFD, DEM) to support process modelling and simulation.