Our scientific objectives

Mineral resources, like energy resources, offer us the opportunity to study a diverse range of physical and chemical mechanisms involved in the intensive transfer of matter and heat. Research combines many Earth Science sub-disciplines, including physical geology, hydromechanics, geochemistry, mineralogy, petrophysics, cristallochemistry and applied mathematics. These concentrations of material are often measured directly, but the deposits also provide an abundance of high-quality samples with which we can make spatial descriptions over scales ranging from micrometres to kilometres. Increasing mineral and energy demands, closely linked to population growth, are raising new issues in the field of Earth sciences and bringing about new technological objectives :

• In metallogeny : rare metals as well as critical metals for the photovoltaic and wind-energy sectors.
• In metallurgy : the processing and marketing of resources and residues, underground residue storage, environmentally-green mines and post-mining activities.
• In carbon resources : unconventional deposits (tight and ultra-tight gas, deep and ultra-deep reservoirs, heavy oils), underground storage of fossil fuels and acidic gases, monitoring of environmental pollutants (in aquifers, soils and the atmosphere).