BRAIN: Which areas are you responsible for at BRAIN?

Dr. Esther Gabor: I am coordinating four projects in the green mining programme. The first is concerned with treating ore to extract gold. The second involves extracting copper from copper slate ore, in the third we are developing various processes of our own, and the fourth project deals with metallophores. Here we are cooperating with the University of Freiburg.

Dr. Guido Meurer: I am Unit Head of Strain Development at BRAIN and responsible for optimising microorganisms. BRAIN has a bio-archive consisting of 53,000 microorganisms that are all listed in line with their performance, potentials and characterisations. Two thousand isolates have been specifically determined for green mining alone. We draw on this collection to develop possible solutions. In the area of green mining, we are particularly interested in microorganisms that are capable of binding and absorbing specific metals and separating precious metals from their given setting.

BRAIN: Since when has BRAIN been concerned with green mining?

Dr. Guido Meurer: We started working on this field within the company six years ago. We wanted to see what microorganisms do with metals and whether there are any industrially relevant interactions. The theme of harnessing alternative domestic resources became highly topical in 2011.

BRAIN: Why 2011?

Dr. Esther Gabor: In that year, China as the sole supplier of high-tech metals reduced its export quotas at short notice. That caused a rare earth hype because large-scale efforts were made to extract metals like these from alternative raw material sources. BRAIN was already strongly involved in setting up the ZeroCarb Alliance at that time, which is currently supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). These two lines of action made us step up our activities to search for alternatives for extracting metal using biotechnological methods.

BRAIN: What exactly are these alternatives?

Dr. Guido Meurer: We no longer speak of conventional deposits, whose resource so far has been rock, but of industrial waste streams such as tailings and electronic waste.

Dr. Esther Gabor: Yes, you could say so. Since taking a closer look at sustain- able resources, many people have started searching for alternative sources of precious metals. Materials such as e-waste are the obvious choice because we know they contain precious metals and rare earths. Tailings, on the other hand, are less obvious but are in fact logical as soon as you go into the subject matter in greater detail.

BRAIN: Has mining become an old hat?

Dr. Guido Meurer: On a global level, the ore content of new deposits is constantly decreasing, which makes cost-effective exploitation more and more difficult. Added to this is the absurd fact that as soon as these minute quantities of rare earths have been extracted at great cost, they are immediately incorporated into electronic equipment, which again dilutes their highly concentrated volume. As primary resources dwindle, the mass of secondary resources is growing. This is the point where conventional methods such as ore extraction are not the most suitable ones.

BRAIN: So the keyword is efficiency?

Dr. Guido Meurer: Yes indeed. If I realise I need to dig up a surface area equivalent to ten football pitches to a depth of ten metres to obtain one ounce of gold, I start asking myself whether it wouldn’t be better to process the mountain of e-waste that is just lying around and costs a lot of money to dispose of. Green mining offers the chance to kill three birds with one stone. The resources are available in Germany, the process is selective and the time-consuming search for substitute materials can be restricted.

Dr. Esther Gabor: The fact is that we have hardly any traditional primary raw material sources in Europe. If the aim is to achieve a certain degree of independence from raw materials imports, green mining is a worthwhile option to follow and to provide with the necessary funding.

BRAIN: Does environmental protection also play a role?

Dr. Esther Gabor: The EU is churning out more and more rules and regulations related to the closed-cycle economy and recycling that govern global production by companies. Producers are under growing pressure to make their economic practices more sustainable, and there is an increasingly urgent need to provide solutions for the waste streams they generate.

Dr. Guido Meurer: The general aim has long been to reduce environmentally harmful incidents that repeatedly occur in connection with mining. Dams that burst and contaminated mine water that flows through villages leave devastated and sometimes contaminated regions behind them. The environmental aspects of traditional metal extraction using conventional processes are horrific. In view of this situation, there is a growing consciousness of how to obtain such resources by less invasive methods.

BRAIN: Does the attraction of green mining stem from the sustainability trend that a politically correct company has to comply with nowadays?

Dr. Guido Meurer: The sustainability debate certainly plays a role in this context. Today’s companies can score points by extracting precious metals in an alternative, more environmentally sound way. Take the jewellery industry, for instance, where consumers are motivated by emotional and ethical considerations. But the purely pragmatic arguments in favour of green mining are more important. Suddenly, companies are presented with a solution for managing their waste issues and simultaneously gaining clean pre- cious metals.

BRAIN: How interested are companies when you look for potential cooperation partners?

Dr. Guido Meurer: Reactions from industry show us how urgent the processing of secondary resources is for obtaining raw materials, and that we have our finger on the pulse. Owing to the convergence of the economic, political and natural factors outlined above, green mining is developing a dynamic all of its own at BRAIN, as has already been the case with other bioeconomy issues at the company.

BRAIN: Research is costly and does not always lead to prompt results. Does BRAIN’s work actually pay off on the market?

Dr. Guido Meurer: Obviously, it is a costly undertaking to isolate, store and maintain such a large number of microorganisms. But all of BRAIN’s research work is based on the bio-archive, which is the beating heart of the company. Only by efficiently sorting and cataloguing these organisms can we obtain results that are put to use in industry. Trial and error and a measure of creativity are another important element of research, alongside economic parameters. This is the only way to explore new avenues and make unexpected discoveries. BRAIN’s success shows we are on the right track. Many of the programmes are already being partnered by reputable industrial enterprises and help to fill BRAIN’s offers.

BRAIN: That is also interesting in view of the frequently voiced criticism that research is not in tune with reality. What is BRAIN’s stance in this respect?

Dr. Esther Gabor: All our projects aim to generate a solution that is suitable for industrial application. Cooperation between science and industry is essential in this case. That is why we always maintain an exchange with other companies from a wide variety of sectors. When a project becomes more specific, the company in question becomes a cooperation partner who shares the entrepreneurial risk with us.

BRAIN: At what point can BRAIN say “Eureka!”, a project has become specific?

Dr. Esther Gabor: To start with, we experiment and test our solution on a small scale for a couple of weeks. We call that feasibility, or “guerilla research” on a more frivolous note. If a promising project emerges, we start to scale it up, i.e. multiply the process using larger parameters into a real project. The final stage of scaling up is a 2,000-litre pilot plant that provides findings which predict what will happen in a real plant. If we see at the pilot plant that this solution actually works, we can scale it up 100-fold and install it on site at a cooperation partner’s premises.

BRAIN: What are the incentives to invest in BRAIN?

Dr. Guido Meurer: In the long term, gold will play an extremely important role for jewellery in the Asian region. The gold market is growing rapidly in relation to population growth. On the other hand, gold is a safe investment in uncertain times. In the past six months alone, the price of gold shot up as soon as topics such as negative interest rates or Brexit were raised.

Dr. Esther Gabor: The conventional extraction of precious metals entails economic dependence, high costs and environmentally harmful processes. Our technologies and methods aim to avoid these disadvantages. The fact that BRAIN is pioneering green mining gives us a good position for launching such processes on the market.

Dr. Guido Meurer: Despite our high-tech society, we will never be able to completely dispense with rare earths. At the same time, we as a society do not want to depend on trading partners who hold a monopoly. So it makes sense to invest in a future-ready technology now before we have to face the next embargo.

Dr. Esther Gabor: Raw materials are valuable in a number of ways. So if we succeed in finding a biotechnology that makes it possible to harness domestic sources in an environmentally sound manner, that makes an important contribution to sustainable economic-policy success in Germany and Europe.

BRAIN: Thank you for this interview.