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EMerald Master’s
in resources engineering

Programme overview
EMerald is a two-year Master’s programme (120 ECTS) organised by four European Universities – University of Liège (ULiège), University of Lorraine (UL), Luleå University of Technology (LTU) and Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg (TUBAF). The programme is designed to focus on the following major aspects of Resources Engineering, Characterisation, Processing, Modelling and Management.
The programme is organised into four semesters (30 ECTS per semester). The first semester is in Liège, the second semester in Nancy, the third semester in Luleå or TUBAF and the fourth semester is in one of the four partner Universities.
The EMerald Master Programme has been designed to find the right balance between knowledge of resources (geology, landfills, urban mines, reserve characterisation and modelling) and process engineering techniques (comminution, sorting, preconcentration, extractive metallurgy and waste disposal).

In semester one, the University of Liège (ULiège) welcomes all students to the programme and provides them with necessary background skills in subjects such as mineral processing basics. In semester two, the University of Lorraine (UL) expands on this knowledge and provides students with a more advanced understanding of broader subjects such as flotation. The third semester offers students the option to specialise in upstream at LTU (primary resources) or downstream at TUBAF (secondary resources). The final semester can be spent in any of the university partners dependent on the thesis specialisation. Regardless of the university location, the Master thesis will be completed in close collaboration with an industrial partner or a research centre that will also host the students for an internship. Explore some of our previous master students theses here.
A broader view on the complete life cycle analysis of materials is explored during the course of the programme through a series of seminars taught by industrial partners. These seminars highlight strategic issues such as the economic, environmental and societal challenges of industrial operations.
The programme goes on to look at the expanded list of scarce Critical Raw Materials within the European Union and expands this focus into course units that explore the key factors that affect critical resource flows and supply, such as diversification, substitution and end-use industrial applications.
“EMerald” is not a Diploma in itself. It’s the name of the master course.
The following degrees will be provided by the different consortium universities, depending on the tracks chosen by the student:
Catalogue of courses (2 years)
Characterisation | Processing | Modelling | Management | |
S1 - ULiège 30* (ECTS) | Mineral Resources | Mineral Processing I | Numerical Analysis | Seminars on economical and societal issues in mining |
S1 - ULiège 30 ECTS Credits | 5 ECTS credits | 5 ECTS credits | 5 ECTS credits | 5 ECTS credits |
S1 - ULiège 30 ECTS Credits | Process Mineralogy | Waste and by-products processing | Geostatistics | Exploitation of Mineral Deposits |
S1 - ULiège 30 ECTS Credits | 5 ECTS credits | 5 ECTS credits | 5 ECTS credits | 5 ECTS credits |
S2 - UL (30 ECTS) | Advanced characterisation of mineral / water interface | Case study of ore processing | Resources modelling and evaluation | Management of Resources |
5 ECTS credits | 5 ECTS credits | 5 ECTS credits | 5 ECTS credits | |
Exploitation of mineral raw materials and Environmental impact of mining | Advanced Mineral Processing | |||
2 ECTS credits | 8 ECTS credits | |||
JOINT SUMMER BUSINESS SCHOOL | ||||
S3 - LTU (30 ECTS) | Mining geology | Mineral Processing II | Simulation of Mineral Processing** | |
LTU | 7.5 ECTS credits | 7,5 ECTS credits | 7,5 ECTS credits | |
(30ECTS) | Senior Design Project in Mineral Processing** | Geometallurgy | ||
S3 | 7,5 ECTS credits | 7,5 ECTS credits | ||
S3 - TUBAF (30 ECTS) | Mineral Liberation Analysis of Mineral Resources ** | Project – Process Design Mineral Processing / Recycling | Simulation of Sustainable Metallurgical Process ** | Resource Management |
3 ECTS credits | 8 ECTS credits | 6 ECTS credits | 6 ECTS credits | |
Selective Separation of Strategic Elements | ||||
5 ECTS credits | ||||
Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer | ||||
4 ECTS credits | ||||
Practice of secondary raw materials | ||||
4 ECTS credits | ||||
S4 ULiège UL LTU TUBAF | Internship and Master thesis (30ECTS) |
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