Research
Existing extraction and manufacturing processes have been developed at a time of limited awareness of resources scarcity and environmental impact. These two issues are encapsulated nowadays in the term sustainability, which encompasses a cost metric. Unfortunately, most of the easy problems affecting the production as well as environmental costs of minerals or metals extraction, and their large scale transformations have been solved. As of today, it is therefore of critical importance to develop innovative approaches to cope with both increasing materials needs and earth intrinsic limitations. Prof. Allanore’s research applies to the development of sustainable materials extraction and manufacturing process. His predilection processing methods rely on, but are not limited to, using electricity as a mean to provide energetically efficient processes. Each research project combines theoretical approach (e.g., how does the flow of current can affect the performance of an electrolytic process) and phenomenological approach (e.g. what are the actual lab performance of the foreseen electrolytic process). For mining, one approach consists in developing processing methods that provide maximum use of the elements composing the ore while minimize water usage, chemicals consumption and the amount of residue. In the field of metal extraction, the research focuses on developing innovative processes with higher productivity and metal quality, while targeting minimization of energy consumption and waste generation. On the manufacturing front, the current research aims at providing manufacturing methods that reduces the number of unit-operations, ultimately increasing the productivity and limiting the scrap-rate of manufacture-intensive business.