Projects are invited from Academic Institutions, Universities, National Institutes and R&D Institution recognized by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India, for upto 3 years duration in the following thrust areas which have direct bearing on mineral sector, applied and sustainable aspect of mining and industrial applications:

2.                  THRUST AREAS OF RESEARCH IN MINES

The broad thrust areas for supporting Research in Mining are given below:

i)                    Prospecting/exploration for strategic rare and rare earth minerals.

ii)                   Development of new technology for mineral exploration and mining on land and deep sea to locate and exploit new mineral resources.

iii)                 Research in mining methods. This includes rock mechanics, mine designing, mining equipments, energy conservation, environmental protection and mine safety.

iv)                 Improve efficiency in process, operations, recovery of by-products and reduction in specification and consumption norms.

v)                  Research in metallurgy and mineral beneficiation techniques to utilize lower grade and finer size ores.

vi)                 Extraction of value added products from mine waste, plant tailings etc.

vii)               Development of new alloys and metal related products, etc.

viii)              Evolve low capital and energy saving processing systems.

ix)                 Production of materials of high purity.

x)                  Cooperative research among organizations associated with the mineral sector.

3.                  Scientific and Technical Merit and relevance to Industry

All organization should follow the instructions given below before submitting the project proposals to the Ministry:-

a)    the proposal should be relevant to the overall mandate of mining, exploration, minerals, metals value addition, waste and environmental impact of mining and metallurgical processing

b)    industry inputs and participation

c)                  Originality in terms of concept, method, innovation, or in application;

d)                  development      of   new    methods,     synthesis      of   advanced materials,

e)                  process improvements and innovation,

f)                   design of apparatus and other research tools,

g)                  process       development       for     waste/secondary/low        grade materials recovery,

h)                  zero waste mining, large data analysis and simulation modeling etc.

i)                    nature of study as experimental, modeling/simulation and both

j)                    There must be a clear enunciation of objectives and deliverable in the proposal

k)                  detailing of research methodology, design of experiments, chosen methods of analysis appropriate and valid.

l)                    intended/potential application area has to be made clear in the proposal, industry relevance, industry participation if appropriate

m)                   potential scalability to pilot plant and later on plant levels

n)                  what are the techno economic benefits (at least rough estimates).

Science & Technology (S&T) projects are funded through grant-in- aid by the Ministry of Mines through the process of project evaluation by Project Evaluation and Review Committee (PERC) and recommended projects are approved by the Standing Scientific Advisory Group (SSAG) constituted by the Ministry.

Projects can be submitted to the Section Officer, (Metal-IV section), Room No. 528, Block 11, 5th Floor, CGO Complex, Ministry  of Mines, Lodhi Road, New Delhi-110001 (Phone No.-011-24364196 in the prescribed proforma by 15th July 2017 alongwith soft copy of the project proposal in MS word format (not more than 3 MB) to the E- mail vikas.raj[at]nic[dot]in . The details of terms and conditions and the prescribed proforma are available at the website www.mines.nic.in. Those projects, which are shortlisted shall be directed to present their

proposal either in Delhi or any other city. The Grants-in-aid will be governed by Government of India terms and conditions as amended from time to time.

YSK