GI-mine – home page

Project Structure

Diagram of the GI-mine work packages WP1–WP7 and the links between them – described in the text below.
General GI-mine project workflow
Text description of the diagram
  • WP1 Project Management, Conclusions, Recommendations, Dissemination and Reporting – runs across the whole project.
  • WP2 Laboratory Experiments and preliminary Field Tests of GI-mine – exchanges results with WP3.
  • WP3 Greenhouse experiment with model plants grown on soil substrates created from mining and other wastes, including municipal sewage sludge.
  • WP4 Estimating methane heating potential for agriculture and urban farming purposes – feeds WP3 and WP5.
  • WP5 Environmental risk assessment and failure analysis – receives results from WP3, WP4 and WP6.
  • WP6 Field trials and semi-technical research GI-mine installation – builds on WP2–WP4.
  • WP7 GI-mine Technology Pre-Feasibility Study – based on WP5 and WP6.
Flow chart of the GI-mine research installation for solid mine wastes – described in the text below.
GI-mine – solid mine wastes research installation flow chart
Text description of the diagram
  • Research material delivery from hard coal mining (PGG) and brown coal mining companies (Germany).
  • Development of preliminary recipes of soil substrates and analysis of the samples: physico-chemical analysis, ecotoxicological analysis, water storage capacity, lysimetric tests.
  • Multi-criteria analysis and final recipe selection, final recipes of soil substrate, design of a pilot installation.
  • Pilot installation for soil-forming material production: mine rocks go through the crushing module, the mixing module (with organic substrate – sewage sludge – and enriching substrates – limestone/dolomites) and the granulation module, giving the final product: soil-forming material.
  • Optimisation and biological tests of the product: recipe and process optimisation, lysimetric test, test on soil organisms, field plant tests.
  • Final products: soil-forming recipes and product samples, leading to eco-efficiency.
Diagram of coal mine methane use in GI-mine – described in the text below.
GI-mine methane application
Text description of the diagram
  • Coal mine methane (CMM) leaves a mine as ventilation air methane (VAM, about 70% of CMM globally) and through methane drainage (about 30% of CMM globally).
  • Drained methane goes to a methane drainage station; its amount depends on volume, concentration and time.
  • In 2022, 97.4 million m³ of CH₄ were vented from compressor stations to the atmosphere in Poland.
  • GI-mine will design and construct software enabling up to 97.4 million m³ CH₄ per year to be effectively combusted, generating 241.55 million EUR as a total economic value of non-emitted methane (detailed economic analysis in Annex 5 of the proposal).
  • Serially connected small gas engines are used instead of one big engine to better control combustion of the variable volume and concentration of drained CH₄ over time.