Mining is a dirty business. At Cape Breton University’s Verschuren Centre, Alicia Oickle is working to help clean it up. Her work is only in its infancy, but the end result could be powerful: the development of mineral processes that reduce the environmental challenges associated with traditional mining and smelting.

The program started earlier this year and is expected to run until 2019. Funding is being pulled from Yava Technologies Inc. ($2 million) and ACOA ($500,000).

Oickle says the resulting technologies could aid mineral processing as well as the environmental treatment of mining byproducts such as tailings, which can leach metals into nearby water sources. “The relative simplicity of the technology allows it to ‘bolt on’ to existing infrastructure,” she says.

“Finding alternative mineral processing technologies allows low-grade deposits to be mined, such as those that were previously uneconomical to pursue with traditional techniques, which in turn increases a mine’s life,” she adds. “And removing traditional mining techniques such as smelting also reduces significant portions of pollution associated with the mining industry.”