Physical Separation '19 attracts record attendance

Physical Separation '19 got underway yesterday with 83 delegates from 18 countries, a record attendance at this the 6th conference in the series, and in opening the event yesterday at Falmouth's National Maritime Museum, I thanked the sponsors for their generous support.

Prof. Sam Kingman, of the University of Nottingham, got us off to a fine start with his keynote lecture "What's cooking in mining?" which examined the steps required to scale up microwave processes, and to draw conclusions as to the steps required to see this technology in daily use across our industry - a time which he feels may be sooner than some workers may have previously thought.

Sam's keynote was followed by a full day of 18 presentations from 9 countries. Due to the high number of quality abstracts received, presentations were limited to 15 minutes, but we retained the long coffee and lunch breaks, so important for networking and talking to familiar and many new faces. I would greatly appreciate feedback on the 15 minute presentation format.

Gregor Borg is one of the familiar faces at MEI events, and he was in Cornwall recently, as over the last 10 years he has been researching into the provenance of the gold of the Bronze Age Sky Disk of Nebra, discovered in 1999 at a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, in Germany, and dated to c1600 BC. Originally the gold was thought to be from the Carpathian Mountains, but a book by Cornish geologist Simon Camm brought Gregor to Cornwall with a German TV unit, and a close collaboration with Simon and the Royal Cornwall Museum proved conclusively that the gold stems from the Carnon River near Falmouth and was traded to Central Europe as early as the Middle Bronze Age. German television ZDF will run a documentary re-enactment of this story next month in their highly popular series TerraXpress. Gregor is photographed below with one of his co-authors Oscar Scharfe, both of PMS Handelskontor, Germany.

Oscar and Gregor

Good to see my old friend Simon Meik, formerly Corporate Director of Processing at Dundee Precious Metals in Bulgaria, now an independent consultant.  Simon and I go back a long way, to the late 1970s when he led the team from AMAX, working at Camborne School of Mines on the feasibility study for the Hemerdon tungsten-tin mine. He was also at that time heavyweight boxing champion of SW-England and I regularly trained with him in the gym, although I have to stress that I never sparred with him!

Despite Simon and AMAX developing a sound flowsheet, the collapse of the tungsten and tin prices in the mid-80s meant that the mine never made it into production. The mine was obviously ill-fated, as, renamed Drakelands, it commenced production in September 2015 (posting of September 17th 2015) but lost £100 million in just three years because its processing plant, very different from the simple but effective AMAX flowsheet, failed to deal with the early difficult ore, and the fall of global prices saddled Wolf Minerals (UK) with enormous debts. The mine closed in October of last year and Wolf Minerals unfortunately had to withdraw its support for this conference.

With Simon and his colleague Nick Moony,
also an independent consultant from Tasmania

The shaking tables used at Drakelands were provided by local Cornish company Holman-Wilfley, one of the conference's major sponsors, represented by David Goldburn and managing director Chris Bailey, who was a student at Camborne School of Mines in the 1970s. Holman-Wilfley is one of the five companies exhibiting, the facilities at the Maritime Museum allowing us to hold a small exhibition in the coffee break-out area.

Prior to Chris, Mike Hallewell was Managing Director of Holman-Wilfley. Now busy travelling the world as an independent consultant specialising in gravity concentration, Mike has extensive experience in this field. Previously with SGS Mineral Services he was with the Wheal Jane and South Crofty mines for a total of 14 years. As concentrator superintendent at Wheal Jane he supervised the early testwork on the Mozley Multi Gravity Separator (MGS).

David, Chris and Mike

Three of our other sponsors are also exhibiting, two of them, TOMRA and Steinert, being the world's leading producers of electronic sorting machines, which are now becoming widely adopted as preconcentration machines, in order to reduce energy consumption and water requirements. TOMRA reached a significant milestone seven months ago, its Sensor Sorting Systems having been operating for a quarter of a century. Today, TOMRA Sorting Mining equipment can be found in a variety of challenging environments and extreme climates around the world, the sorters having recently recovered the world’s largest diamond in over 100 years. Five years ago TOMRA finalised an agreement in cooperation with Outotec to supply Outotec-branded sorting solutions for the mining and metallurgical industry. This week TOMRA is sharing a booth with Outotec, another major sponsor, involved with all aspects of mineral processing, and a great supporter of many MEI Conferences.

The TOMRA/Outotec booth

Kai Bartram and James McFarlane with Simon Meik at the Steinert booth

Also exhibiting is Comminution '20 sponsor Grinding Solutions Ltd (GSL), one of Cornwall's fastest growing mineral processing facilities which has significantly expanded its mineral processing capabilities and expertise in the last two years to create an extensive 1,500m2 laboratory facility. A wide range of metallurgical test programmes can be conducted with the comprehensive grinding, flotation, classification, gravity and hydrometallurgy capabilities available. GSL is represented by one of its latest recruits, Technical Manager Phil Hingston, Tim Richards and Senior Metallurgist Kathryn Hadler, who splits her professional time between GLS and Imperial College London.

Tim, Phil, Kathryn, and Tim Sandbrook of Mineco UK

It is great to see all the major Cornish companies represented at the conference, and we welcome for the first time Wheal Jane Laboratory, represented by Liam Palmer and Clifford Rice, and for the first time in 12 years Wardell-Armstrong, represented by Phil King and Ben Simpson. Tom Naylor is representing Cornish Lithium, also at its first MEI Conference.

Also attending his first MEI Conference is Elsevier's Josh Bayliss, Executive Publishing Manager for Minerals Engineering. He replaced a very well-known face, Dean Eastbury, last year. Dean is now retired and living in Hayle, Cornwall, but caught up with us last night for the evening hike, and of course, for a few pints in the Chain Locker.

There was a good sprinkling of the Minerals Engineering editorial team around today, the Editor-in-Chief (me), the two Editors, Pablo Brito-Parada, of Imperial College, UK, and Kristian Waters, of McGill University, Canada, and Erin Bobicki, of Toronto University, Canada. Also nice to welcome Paul Moore, editor of our long-standing media partner International Mining to his first MEI Conference.

Pablo Brito-Parada (right) with Christian Ihle of Chile

Kristian Waters with Kathryn Hadler, the former editors
of International Journal of Mineral Processing

Erin Bobicki with colleague Darryel Boucher, and Alexander Ure of COREM

It was a great first day at the conference but nice to get some fresh air and in the late afternoon we met up on the seafront for a rather damp 3 mile walk around the Fal estuary to the inner harbour and drinks at the very crowded but atmospheric 17th century Chain Locker pub.

A brief stop at the Fal estuary before the rains arrived

At the Chain Locker with former Minerals Engineering Executive Publishing Manager
Dean Eastbury, and his successor Josh Bayliss

Twitter @barrywills