The Evolution of Mineral Processing- thoughts from 40 years ago

Way back in 1979 I was a young lecturer at the Camborne School of Mines (CSM) and in that year we had a very eminent Visiting Fellow from Australia, Prof. Alban Lynch, the founding Director of the JKMRC.

Prof. Alban Lynch in the early 1970s

I was involved with the production of the CSM Annual Journal, and persuaded Alban to contribute an article, and the subject that he chose was The Evolution of Mineral Processing, a subject that I have presented a couple of times in China over the past two years, and have been invited to present at the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg in Germany in October.

It is fascinating to look back and read what Alban had to say about the developments that had taken place in the first 80 years of the 20th century, and what his thoughts were for the future.

He began by comparing mineral processing advances with other technologies, such as jet aircraft, nuclear power, space flights, lasers and computers and felt that it was depressing to realise that there had been only three major advances in mineral processing during the century, one occurring in each quarter of the century.

However he stressed that "our reputation as engineers" was somewhat restored by the fact that the first of these developments was froth flotation, "one of the greatest technological advances of our age and this will be realised if an attempt is made to conceive of a world without ample and cheap supplies of copper, lead, zinc and nickel".

The other two major developments were, Prof. Lynch suggested, the industrial processing and pelletising of taconites, and the development of on-stream analysis. The moral from these developments, he said, is that important advances in mineral processing, advances which solve serious problems, are slow and require a large investment of money and effort. With this in mind, he asked what we can say about the problems of the present and the future? He predicted that the solution of the problem of concentrating fine particles less than about 10 microns in size could be the fourth achievement of the 20th century.

Little did Alban know that in 1979 we were at the cusp of the 3rd Industrial Revolution, and the explosion in computing power that would take place in the 1980s, leading to rapid developments in automatic control, simulation and process design, and that he would be one of the pioneers in the relatively new field of modelling and simulation, which would aid design of ever larger equipment and innovative new processes. He did identify one of the most important problems, and an area in which the JKMRC would become a leader, 'mine-to-metal' relating to rock breakage by explosives and the ability to tailor these processes such that "we finish up with a product which is the best that we can get for future use".

He said that he could not emphasise too strongly the importance of further advances in mineral processing technology because of the major influence which minerals have always had on the welfare of society. He quoted Sir Paul Hasluck, a politician, historian and former Governor-General of Australia who said that "engineers are the shapers of contemporary civilisation and to no group does this apply more than the minerals engineers".

Prof. Lynch concluded by saying that the achievements of the final quarter of the 20th century would be in the hands of the new generation of metallurgists. I was fortunate to be involved in the teaching of this new generation, many of whom I have kept in contact with and have been proud to follow their achievements in this crucial industry. They in turn have produced a new generation and some of these are also now a part of the minerals world, and I would like to ask the young (and not so young) metallurgists of today- what do you feel are the main problems of the present and the future?

Twitter @barrywills