Inovação no setor de mineração de ferro em Minas Gerais com foco na destinação de rejeitos

Abstract

The iron mining sector is fundamental to the economy of Minas Gerais, and the generation of huge amounts of tailings is a relevant environmental problem for the state. Understanding and structuring an innovation system to develop technological innovations for the disposal of these tailings is currently an extremely relevant topic. In this thesis, three topics related to tailings generated in iron mining were studied: (i) the existing innovation system in Minas Gerais with a focus on the destination of these tailings; (ii) the different technologies and applications existing in the scientific and patent literature for these wastes; and (iii) collaborative innovation platforms focused on the destination of these tailings with the case of Platform R3. Chapter 1 presents the theoretical framework on innovation systems. Chapter 2 describes the regional innovation system in mining activity in the Quadrilátero Ferrífero based on research in the specialized literature on regional innovation systems, sectoral analyzes, production chain, innovation in the mining area. It was also carried out a series of semi-structured interviews with different actors in the activity's production chain mineral, as employees of mining companies and companies that supply products and services and technical consultants. The results obtained indicate that mining in Minas Gerais has many important characteristics for the development of a robust Regional Innovation System. The mapping showed that there is a great concentration of the market, with one of the companies having almost 80% of the national production, with global operations. On the other hand, there is a diversity in the organizations of the Regional Innovation System, such as universities and public and private research centers, active development agencies, in addition to technical associations, unions and other organizations. The work also confirmed the great relevance in innovation of equipment and service suppliers in the mining chain, being the main patent filing agents in the sector. Another relevant aspect observed was the lack of public policies to stimulate innovation in the mining sector that could lead to the use of the tailings generated by mining as a second-generation raw material for other production chains. In Chapter 3, the generation of iron mining tailings in the world is described and the composition of these tailings with mapping through scientific articles and patents of more than 20 technologies for the transformation of mining tailings into products, in addition to presenting some real application examples. Mappings in the INPI, Worldwide Spacenet, USTPO, CIPO, APO banks showed that close to 61% of patents are for reprocessing, 29% for civil construction / paving and 10% for technological applications. The text also addresses a preliminary analysis of the path of these technologies to the market and evaluates two types of barriers: technological and market. Chapter 4 describes and evaluates the collaborative R3 Mineral Platform created to generate innovations for the disposal of iron mining tailings, which was an unprecedented movement in Minas Gerais in which different actors related to the mining chain participated. The text compares Platform R3 to two other international platforms, i.e. AMIRA in Australia and CEMI in Canada. For the R3 Mineral Platform, it is necessary to stablish a governance model and improve internal and external communication, and attract new participants, specially suppliers from the mineral extraction chain and associations representing the mineral sector. Chapter 5 presents the conclusions and contributions for future studies.