Hello and welcome to this talk about
geology, metals and green technology. My
name is Eoghan Holohan and I'm a lecturer
in the UCD School of Earth
Sciences. I'm going to be talking today
about the above-mentioned topic but also
to alert you to our Bachelors in Science
in Geology which can be applied for
through the CEO system using the code
DN200 which of course is that of
the common entry for science at UCD. So
what is geology? Well it's the study of
this blue ball over here on the right
hand side, the study of planet Earth.
And mainly that's about studying the
materials that Earth is made of, these
mainly are composed of rocks, sediments and
various geological fluids like water of
course and magmas and various other things
as well as gases that are both above the
earth's surface in the atmosphere, within
that the hydrosphere and within the
solid earth itself. So collectively this
comprises the world's largest and oldest
repository of chemical, physical and
biological information. So the challenge
for us as geologists is to extract out
as much of that information as we can in
various means and ways and then to put
it together to understand how the earth
works.
So essentially, geology is the foundation
from which we understand how life,
including ourselves it fits into the
story of planet Earth and how planet
Earth keeps us going.
So geology is a very multidisciplinary
subject. This is a very nice cartoon
which summarizes that. We have lots of
people here all around the globe, all
around the earth, a model of the earth
and they're all trying to figure out
various aspects of how the earth is
working. So if we look in carefully we
can see we've got physicists here for
example here on the top
right, we've got some
physicists we've got some chemists, we've
got people who are doing data science
and computational work, we've got
mathematicians down here and we've also
got biologists and of course geographers,
all playing their part in 
understanding how planet Earth works by
measuring various aspects of it and
gathering data and various aspects.
In addition to all these different
disciplines that come together into
geology, there's no small amount of
imagination and art which is involved in
geology too, because you're taking such a
variety of different datasets
all of which
may have various gaps and
incompleteness and trying to pull that
together into a coherent picture or
understanding of not only what's at
the surface of the Earth but also what's
underneath it as shown here in this in
this cartoon up at the top left.
So geology is global and geologists
tackle profound and practical questions
about various aspects of the earth 
on all scales and all across the
Earth. So things like plate tectonic
motions, geothermal activity, volcanoes
and earthquakes and we can also look at
things like water and the oceans, how the
landscape is evolving and natural
hazards which are associated with the
evolution of landscape and also
associated with of course volcanoes and
earthquakes and other phenomena on Earth.
We can also look at how the solid earth
couples with the oceans, with the
hydrosphere and with the atmosphere and
in doing that we can understand things
about climate change, the drivers of
climate change both in the long term and
in the short term. And we can think about
how life has evolved, how it originated,
how conditions on earth have changed and
changed life as it has evolved through
time and deep geological time. We can
also look at things or we also address
things like how to find minerals and
also what is the nature of the deep
structure of the Earth, what lies beneath
our feet and how old is the earth and
how it has evolved since it formed. So
these are obviously a huge number of big
questions that are addressed by
geologists. I don't have time to go
through all of them but I will talk to
you briefly today about mineral
resources and how to find metals that
are critical to economic development in
the future. So a major driver of economic
development at the moment of course is the
technological revolution. So by 2050
we're expecting to be about 10 billion
people on this planet and if all of those
people are to have the quality of life
that we have in the more developed
part of the world, then of course, they
need access to technology and there has
to be the components that go
into making this technological
capability have to be found
and have to be resourced from the Earth.
So this screen here or the screen shot,
shows you a diagram of all the
different chemical components that go
into for example a smartphone. So we have
up here on the top left ,we have all the
different elements that go into making
the screen for example. Here we have on
the top right various electronic
components and the elements that go into
those. Down the bottom left, we have
elements that go into the battery and
over here to the bottom right, we have
elements that go into for example, the
casing that holds everything together in
the device in the device. Now a lot of
these elements like oxygen for example
or carbon are fairly common in the earth
and so we're not too worried about
finding those. But a lot of the elements
in this diagram and particularly the ones
that I have circled here, which are metals are
quite rare or expensive to get hold of
and put into a phone. So these are
elements which are include things like
copper, silver, gold and tantalum
also lithium and cobalt particularly for
the batteries and for storing energy
which we'll talk about a bit more in the
talk. So how do we find these energy
critical metals and how do we extract
them in a sustainable way? Well yes in
general for all resources that we have,
so, all the built environment, all the
clothes you're wearing, the
computer you're looking at, the electronics
in your room, everything around you has
to be sourced from somewhere and in
general we can either grow that for
example cotton going into clothes or we
have to extract it from the earth by
mining. And mining of course has a bad
reputation, a serious public relations
problem. In some cases for good
reasons but there are various forms
of mining, various ways in which these
metals are taken out from the earth and
put into our electronic goods. So for
example lithium is actually extracted
nowadays mainly from evaporation of
ground water, salt rich ground water in arid
environments. So that itself has a lot of
challenges because you
have a sustainability issue with regards
to accessing water which of course in
such water challenged areas are needed by
other life or other people.
And we also then have the old
traditional method of getting in the
ground and digging out some copper
and silver and gold deposits as in here
in the Flambeau example from North
America. But an important point with
this is that mining in itself can be
sustainable and can be done in a way
which is environmentally sound. So for
example this Flambeau pit has
actually now since the mining operations
ceased has now been reclaimed and  relandscaped and made into a
recreation and wildlife park. So similarly
if we instead of digging up big holes in
the ground we look towards more
underground mining, we can reduce the
environmental and visual impact of
mining and this is exemplified here in
Ireland actually so this is an image of
the Lisheen mine in Tipperary when it
was operative down the bottom here. And
and this is now, you'd hardly even notice
there was a mine there really apart from
the big lake here in the foreground and
even that lake is gone now if you look
at images now of the of this area it's
mostly fields because it's mostly been
reclaimed
since the mining operations ceased. So an
alternative source to lithium can be
found here in this piece of rock that
is being held by David Kaeter he's a
student in in UCD and he's been looking
at an alternative source for lithium in
Ireland, a prospect in County Carlow
where we have this mineral called Spodumene,
a lithium barium mineral.
Spodumene can be potentially accessed
therefore without necessarily of course 
to major disturbance of groundwater
and pull down of groundwater
resources. Another major consideration in
terms of the future technological
challenges and societal challenges is
that of climate change and as part of
climate action we're steadily moving
towards more renewable energy sources
like wind and solar. The thing is
though that in order to do this we need
a hell of a lot of copper, we need lots of
copper and in fact we need four to six
times more copper than we would use in
an ordinary nuclear or conventional
fossil fuel type electricity system
because we need extra metal at this
more distributed system of
windmills and solar farms which need to
connect to a grid. So we need a lot
more copper and and also we also need to
keep an eye on what we're actually
building these things on and so, you know
these wind turbines as you can see in
the image here, these are sitting out to
sea, they're not floating, they're
actually embedded onto the seabed. So we
need to know what the seabed is made of
and that's where geologists come in.
So this plot here shows the
production of copper in millions of
tonnes per annum and since about 1900
and going to the modern day, it's just
about 2020 and then projected into the
future up to about 2040 and a major take
home from this graph is you can see that
the production of copper has been
steadily or exponentially increasing
almost over the last 100 years or so
and but an important point from this
graph is that the projected amount of
copper that's going to be needed, about
seven hundred and forty six million tons
of copper is going to be needed in the
next twenty to thirty years,
that amount actually will probably
exceed all of the copper has been mined
in history up until now. So we have a
huge challenge to find this copper in
order to implement our goals for climate
change and a mitigation of climate
change. So this is a major problem and it
is actually the focus of ongoing
research at the UCD School of Earth
Sciences and as part of the Irish Center
for Research in Applied Geosciences  or
iCRAG. This is an example from
professor Murray Hitzman of iCRAG of
a copper and cobalt deposit in the
Central African copper belt which is
under investigation by UCD researchers
at the moment. So in addition to
generating and transmitting electricity
by renewable methods and the resource
issue that that raises, we also have to
find ways to store energy, store
electricity because electricity
generated by wind and solar is
intermittent. That means for example that
we don't have a steady supply of
electricity from those sources because
of course you don't generate so much
solar powerif the sun isn't
shining and you don't generate so much
wind power if the wind isn't blowing so
in times when we don't have a lot of
wind or a lot of sun we need a way to
store the energy that's generated when
we do have lots of wind and sun.
In order to facilitate a consistent
sourcing of light and heat and also
fundamentally, we need to store
electricity in order to power our
transportation network which of course
is a major challenge in itself to try
and wean away from fossil fuels. So the
challenge here is that not only are
metals like cobalt and lithium,
they're quite scarce and difficult to
find they're also quite expensive and so
we're looking for alternative metals
that we can use in batteries and one of
these options is zinc actually. This is a
recent paper from Science in 2017
which reported on a new way of designing
zinc batteries, such that actually
their performance levels are equivalent
to lithium batteries and this is really
potentially quite an important discovery
because the zinc is a much cheaper
metal at the moment and it's not so
scarce as lithium. So where do we get the
zinc? Well, if you're a geologist you'll
know that zinc is mainly found as an
ore called or a mineral called sphalerite
which is the brown bands shown here in
this image to the top left of the screen.
The purplish metallic bands are
actually another mineral called galena
which hosts lead and and where we find
this actually is in Ireland. So Ireland
has some of the best or had some of
the best lead and zinc deposits
in the world, world-class lead and zinc
exploration territory is Ireland. 
These yellow dots on the map of Ireland
here show areas or sites that were mined
commercially for lead and zinc and
currently we only have one mine left in Ireland
which I'll talk about in a
minute.
This map to the right hand side is a
geological map showing showing rocks of
various ages and the key point in this
map which I'll show you is these
black lines which run through here. These
are faults
these are big fractures running through
the rocks which has been developed
about 300 million years ago as these as
the area of Ireland was was being
stretched roughly northwest to southeast
here. So if we take a 3-dimensional view
of those fault structures, what
researchers have been doing in UCD is trying to understand how those
fault structures relate to mineral
deposits hosting lead and zinc. So here
in this cartoon,
we can see the faults going down deep in
under the ground up to several
kilometers below the ground surface and
and offsetting various layers here as
you can see and then the idea is that
there are fluids circulating here under
the ground and these fluids are actually
bringing up the minerals through the
rocks and then using the faults as
conduits to go up to higher levels in
the earth where eventually the fluids
allow the lead and zinc to drop out
as solid mineral forms like you see in
the top left in the photograph there. So
where did we actually see that in
Ireland? Well at the moment there's only
one operational mine in Ireland this
is at Navan and if you were to drive around Navan you'd hardly notice it was there really.
In fact, it's because mostly it's
deep under the ground, it's the third
largest lead and zinc mine in Europe and
it's now down excavating at about a
kilometre under the ground. So we can see, at the top of the slide
here you can see this oblique view
of Navan from Google Earth or satellite
image and if we now imagine taking a
slice down through the earth under Navan
using seismic imaging this is what we
might see. So over here on the left-hand
side you can see this area where we've
got these blue lines, these represent
exploration bore holes these blue lines
drill down under the ground and you can
see we've got these zones of red and
black, reflections here. These are
reflections or layers or horizons which
are reflecting back seismic waves
that are being bounced around in here
and they're reflecting back to the
surface and picked up in sensors at the
surface. So we can make an image of what
the subsurface structure beneath
Navan looks like and from that you can
see that where the mining is operational
here, you have these very strongly
colored, very bold black and red 
zones. These represent very strong
reflections from under the ground and then
you can see that continues towards the
bottom right of the image here and this
is where we might have suspected
that there could be similar deposits
under the ground and indeed
this was confirmed subsequently in 2012
when there were drillings that were
undertaken down to very deep depths down
into these reflective areas and below
them and down to about 1.5 kilometers
under the ground or slightly more and
here we found a new lead and zinc
deposit or an extension of the existing
deposit, which is now going to extend
the life of this mine and means we don't
have to try and find it somewhere else.
Another example of how UCD research
is used to understand lead and zinc
deposits is back with the example of
Lisheen and so here I'm going to quickly
show you this this animation or this
video here which shows a 3D animation of
the Lisheen lead and zinc deposits. What
we have here, is this is actually a
geological layer or top of a geological
layer deep under the ground. We can see
it's elevation here in meters
and again this is below the ground, you
can see that it's highly elevated
on one side with these red zones. It's
dropped down to a lower level here in
the blue zones and you can see that how
it's managed to be dropped down is along
these these grey plains which are the
faults that I mentioned earlier these are
these fractures which are, which one
side of the rock have slid down to a
lower level and then you can see that
the minerals seem to be, the mineral,
these kind of metallic purplish
areas, you can see that they're coming
away off from the faults. So using a
really amazing set of borehole data and
other information, we can understand then
the three-dimensional geometry of the
body and also then how it's affected
by these pre-existing fracture systems.
So what we can see here in grey is the
outline of the ore body,
depth at Lisheen and these various
geological fractures and faults
are shown in various colors here. And if
we move to the next slide what I can
show you is that this is the
concentration of copper in the ore body
as reconstructed by researchers in
iCRAG at UCD. So here we can see in the
the warm colors, in the yellows and the
reds, we have high concentrations of
copper. You can see the copper
concentration is especially high over
next to these big faults so again
this is supporting the idea that the fluids have
come up along the faults and dropped out
of the copper adjacent to the fault first
and then flowed out into the rocks
surrounding the fault with time. You
can see here, the zinc concentrations,
a similar pattern again, we have the
highest concentrations of zinc closer
to those green and purple lines and red
lines which are the faults in this map.
So by studying Lisheenn an Irish example,
a world-class lead and zinc deposit, we
can figure out what the characteristics
are that will enable us to find similar
or even better and bigger deposits
either in Ireland or elsewhere in the
world and this will help us to provide
the raw materials that may be needed for
challenges associated with green energy
transition in the future. So in general
geology and sustainability actually go
hand in hand on many many levels. This is
a diagram which is the summary of the UN
sustainable development goals and as we
can highlight here with these circles,
geology is directly involved in
achieving more than half of the UN
sustainable development goals and
indirectly in several more. So I
mentioned many of them through this talk
now, for example, affordable and clean
energy, economic growth, industry
innovation, sustainable cities and
communities are all requiring sources of
metals that will power this into the
future. But other aspects like clean
water, sanitation, climate action, life below
water, life on land, I simply haven't
time to talk about right now but geology
is also heavy involved in all of those.
So I'll leave you here with this last
slide which is to remind you that if
you want to study geology we'd love
to have you at UCD and this is a picture
here of our geology students from UCD
who are investigating a raised beach in
southern Spain, this has now been
consolidated into solid rock. It's not
very old at all and it probably
indicates that this area has been
undergoing a lot of tectonic uplift in
the last few years or few
thousands of years and probably still
ongoing and that's a whole other subject I don't have time to talk about
right now. But if you have any questions
or you're interested in learning more
about our geology degree you can
email us at geology@ucd.ie and
remember that the CEO code is DN200, the common entry for
science at UCD. So thank you for
listening, I hope you enjoyed it and take
care. Bye bye.
