Geological exploration for critical battery and industrial metals using Artificial Intelligence

使用人工智能对关键电池和工业金属进行地质勘探

• 批准号: 10042786
• 金额: $ 6.26万
• 依托单位: OPTIC EARTH LIMITED
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Grant for R&D
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=10042786
• 关键词: Geological; exploration; critical; battery; industrial

Geological exploration for critical battery and industrial metals using Artificial IntelligenceFor this Innovate Fast Start project, Optic Earth is developing a workflow to automate and augment the process of discovering economically viable deposits of metals critical to the Energy transition. These minerals (copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium and rare earth metals) are critical components of the net-zero supply chain and are used to make power infrastructure and batteries among a host of other manufactured products.Today, mineral exploration consists of manual and isolated interpretation of geologic and geophysical data over small areas of land. This high-stakes process is often unsuccessful, with as few as 1% of exploration programs resulting in the discovery of an economic resource. The lack of investment in mineral exploration over the last two decades poses a significant risk to the supply of copper, battery, and other critical metals going forward, potentially delaying or impacting the net zero transition.Our project aims to automate the process of generating new and economically viable mineral resources, accelerating the process of finding new deposits globally. By using artificial intelligence techniques, we will analyse large geological databases and remote sensing data (satellite images, geophysical data), over a large swathe of land. Using data mining, cutting-edge geophysical analysis techniques, and machine learning approaches, we will generate a suite of potential geological targets likely to contain economic concentrations of metals that may be taken forward by mining companies to develop. This project will create a code repository and demonstratable workflow that can be further developed and packaged up to discover mineral deposits around the world.These outcomes and workflow of this project will be commercialised by selling insight or ready-to-go mineral projects to mining companies, supporting a growing technology business here in the UK.

使用人工智能对关键电池和工业金属进行地质勘探对于这个创新快速启动项目，Optic Earth 正在开发一个工作流程，以自动化和增强发现对能源转型至关重要的经济上可行的金属矿床的过程。这些矿物（铜、镍、钴、锂和稀土金属）是净零供应链的关键组成部分，用于制造电力基础设施和电池以及许多其他制成品。如今，矿物勘探包括手动和对小块土地上的地质和地球物理数据的孤立解释。这种高风险的过程往往是不成功的，只有 1% 的勘探项目最终发现了经济资源。过去二十年缺乏对矿产勘探的投资，对未来铜、电池和其他关键金属的供应构成重大风险，可能会延迟或影响净零转型。我们的项目旨在实现新能源发电过程的自动化和经济上可行的矿产资源，加速全球寻找新矿藏的进程。通过使用人工智能技术，我们将分析大片土地上的大型地质数据库和遥感数据（卫星图像、地球物理数据）。利用数据挖掘、尖端地球物理分析技术和机器学习方法，我们将生成一系列可能包含金属经济集中区的潜在地质目标，这些目标可能由矿业公司进行开发。该项目将创建一个代码存储库和可演示的工作流程，可以进一步开发和打包以发现世界各地的矿藏。该项目的这些成果和工作流程将通过向矿业公司出售洞察力或现成的矿产项目来商业化，支持英国不断增长的技术业务。