SRCR '11 Conference Diary

Tuesday May 10th

Sustainability through Resource Conservation and Recycling '11 got under way this morning, and I welcomed our 46 delegates, representing Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Finland, France, Iran, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden and UK.

Terry Norgate of CSIRO

Although a truly international audience, the turnout for a subject of such importance was low, but not altogether unexpected, as I discussed in Tuesday's posting. After a brief introduction to Cornwall, I introduced our consultant, Prof. Markus Reuter, of Outotec, Australia, our corporate sponsor. Markus discussed the role of a technology supplier in enabling sustainability, and then introduced the first keynote speaker, Terry Norgate of the CSIRO Minerals Down Under Flagship, Australia, who spoke about the various issues relating to the sustainable production and uses of metals. Resource consumption is rising rapidly, driven by population growth and rising wealth, and metals are a significant component, due to society's almost insatiable demand, to provide useful services via metal-containing products. Sustainable development requires greatly improved efficiencies in the use of resources, and also major reductions in waste generation and emissions, in order to break the link between economic expansion and resource consumption. The need to supply primary metals will be supplemented by increasing amounts of secondary metals from recycling of metal stocks in use.

Relaxing at the morning coffee break

There were six papers in the morning's technical session (the conference abstracts can be viewed on MEI Online, and the conference papers are available on CD), four from Australia, and two from Finland's Aalto University (formerly Helsinki University of Technology). Australia is represented by eight delegates, and Finland four, all the latter being from Aalto.

The afternoon session contained papers from South Africa, Finland and Australia. Unfortunately the Egyptian author did not show, probably due to visa problems. We must stress that delegates to future conferences apply for visas well in advance. I had emails today from the delegates from Iran and Netherlands to advise that they had failed to obtain their visas in time to travel.

There is no better therapy after a hard day's conferencing than to walk the beautiful Cornish coast path and there was a good turnout in the late afternoon for my 6 mile guided walk, which ended with a welcome beer at the old Chain Locker pub in Falmouth town. Events such as this provide a great way for delegates to really get to know each other in a relaxed social atmosphere.

In the Pennance Point woodland

Overlooking Falmouth

  

 A welcome beer at the Chain Locker  It was good to see so many young presenters who are making their international conference debuts this week. I am pictured with them at the pub (below right): Gregory Lewis (Belgium), Ben Jones (Australia), Nguyen Nghiem (Korea), Artem Golev (Australia), Rodrigo Silva (Brazil) and Madeleine Scheidema (Finland). With the conference "first-timers" The pub is in Falmouth old town with many excellent restaurants in he vicinity. I had a great evening in The Hut with Dean Eastbury, Elsevier publishing manager, and Minerals Engineering Editorial Board members Markus Reuter, Kari Heiskanen and Jannie van Deventer. Kari is also co-editor of International Journal of Mineral Processing. Wednesday May 11th The day got off to a fine start with an excellent keynote presentation from Prof. Richard Williams of University of Leeds, UK, entitled "Rethinking separation methods and sustainable uses of fine minerals". He discussed the prospects for re-use of fine mineral waste particulates in engineered products by recovering and separating ultra-fine minerals and assembling them into new materials. In the separation process an alternative flotation method was described using aphron systems to recover fine materials, and in the assembly process some alternative methodologies using environmentally preferable surfactants were explored.  Richard discusses his keynote with Profs. Markus Reuter & Jannie van Deventer The presentation attracted lively discussion, particularly between one of Richard's co-authors, Jan Cilliers of Imperial College, and Jannie van Deventer, of University of Melbourne. Although the paper is not in the proceedings CD it will be submitted to the special issue of Minerals Engineering and is certain to generate much interest. Jon with Dr. Neira of Colombia The session following the keynote contained 9 papers, with authors from Australia, Korea, Portugal, Belgium, Colombia, France and Brazil. The Colombian presenter, Gustavo Neira, of Universidad Industrial de Santander, arrived yesterday afternoon after a delayed flight, but was surprisingly cheerful despite having lost his  baggage and two posters en route! After a late lunch another great social networking experience, out first conference dinner at Cornwall's famous Eden Project. This proved to be a memorable occasion, as we were privileged to have the two, normally crowded, biomes to ourselves, with plenty of time to experience the heat and humidity within the Rainforest biome, before meeting up in the Mediterranean biome for drinks and an excellent barbecue. Arriving at the Eden Project's giant biomes   In the Mediterranean biome   The delegates from Aalto, Finland enjoying predrinks in the biome The fabulous barbecue setting The sun sets on Eden Eden was a truly special experience, and we will be back there next year for Biohydromet '12. Thursday May 12th Prof. Jan Cilliers, of Imperial College, UK, presented the 3rd and final keynote lecture this morning, on the sustainability of minerals engineering talent. The International Mineral Processing Council (IMPC) has established a Commission on Mineral Processing Education to consider the global challenge of ensuring an adequate supply of well-trained mineral processing engineers. The Commission has, for the past two years, been collecting international information on the recent minerals engineering supply position and with a view into the near future. This data has been collated and there are some interesting and surprising results. North America produces 175 minerals engineering graduates per annum, South America 1020, Turkey and the Middle East 470, Africa 400 (mainly from South Africa), Russia and Eastern Europe 370, Australia only 40, India a poor 140 and China a staggering 2900. It is evident that India will find it difficult to sustain its large mining industry with local talent alone, while Australia's mining industry employs chemical engineers to satisfy demands. Although all of India's graduates go into industry, and around 80% of graduates from China and Australia, less than 50% of African and European graduates stay in the industry, their degrees being a springboard into other areas. Unfortunately Jan's paper is not on the CD and will not be submitted to Minerals Engineering but the data will be updated and presented at the IMPC in India next year. At this stage Jan would welcome any input or views. A very full day of papers followed Jan's keynote, with 10 papers from Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Finland, UK and Canada, and then Jon closed the conference, inviting everyone to attend SRCR '13, in Falmouth again in May 2013. This has been an interesting and enjoyable event with a great mix of people of different nationalities. Apart from the keynotes, I have not commented on individual papers, but would like delegates to add their own comments, towards producing an archival report for MEI Online. All corresponding authors have been invited to submit their final papers to Minerals Engineering for peer-review. The special SRCR issue is scheduled for publication early next year.