New uses for industrial minerals

In the Minerals Engineers network group, Achilleas Amanatidis of S & B Industrial Minerals Greece, posed the question of whether in the present economic climate we should be looking for new uses for industrial minerals.

There is an article in the June 2009 issue of Industrial Minerals on pps. 48-55 that may interest him and others. Its title is 'Minerals key to locking emissions' and it examines the use of industrial minerals in capturing carbon dioxide emissions. The minerals that are capable of sequestering CO2 are those that contain the alkaline earths- magnesium oxide and calcium oxide.

Looks like a potentially fruitful area for research.

100 up!!

The Minerals Engineers group on LinkedIn reached 100 members today, after being formed only 2 weeks ago.

If you are not already a member of the group, I encourage you to join and to ask your network connections to do likewise.

This has tremendous potential for networking, discussion etc.

Huge paint job 'could avert global warming'

Whitewashing roofs, roads and pavements to reflect sunlight and heat could play a big part in containing climate change, the US Energy Secretary and Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Chu told the Nobel Laureate Symposium in London yesterday. Pale surfaces refect up to 80% of the sunlight that falls on them, compared with about 20% for dark ones.

At the same symposium Prof. Jack Steinberger, director of CERN, said that all of the world's known reserves of fossil fuels, including oil, gas and coal, would be depleted within 60 years, and that the energy of the future would be thermal solar.

The full story can be found in The Times (May 27th, pages 16-17).

Is the mining industry recovering?

A poll of the members of the LinkedIn group Minerals & Metals Professionals Globally asked the question “the new wave of optimism in the mining industry: premature or justified?”

The responses were:

29%- give it 6 months
21%- justified- it’s getting better
18%- premature- worst not over
15%- give it more than 1 year
14%- too early to say..

A glance at metal prices over the past 90 days suggests that things may be improving.

Currently there have been well over 300 responses to the poll, and I will update the statistics in the near future. It would also be interesting to have comments on this blog.

Physical Separation '09

Just to remind anyone who is intending to attend Physical Separation '09 in Falmouth next month that the deadline for 'early-bird' registration is May 26th.

Minerals Engineers Network Group

It's only a week since Norman Lotter, of Xstrata Process Support, introduced me to LinkedIn. I had heard of it before, but had always avoided what I thought was just another version of Facebook.

It certainly is not that. It is an excellent professional networking site, and I was amazed to see so many people that I know already connected. The Minerals Engineers group, which MEI set up last week, now has well over 60 members, and the group is growing daily.

Each member has his/her own URL address linking to a personal profile, which can be used in email signatures etc. Norman's profile, for example, can be seen here.

While on the subject of the Minerals Engineers, I would like to congratulate group member Megan Becker on her award of PhD from the University of Cape Town.

Both Norman and Megan are MEI Conference Consultants.

How not to boost your list of publications

The pressure on academics to publish is increasing, and with this pressure there is an alarming trend for some workers, in their naivety, to attempt multiple publication of the same piece of work.

In recent weeks I have had to reject at the last minute two papers, which had gone through the thorough review process for Minerals Engineering. Both papers had been found acceptable for publication, until a Scopus search revealed that they had in fact been published elsewhere, with thinly- veiled different titles, but essentially the same content.

Apart from wasting the valuable time of reviewers and editors, this practice is completely unethical, and those authors found guilty are likely to be blacklisted by the journal.

My advice, therefore, is simple- don't even think about doing this! With modern electronic search tools such as Scopus and ScienceDirect available to journal editors, you are bound to be found out, and your chances of further publication greatly curtailed.

JKTech to sponsor Comminution '10

Good to see that Australia's JKTech have agreed to sponsor Comminution '10, joining Sigmund Lindner and the media sponsors Gold & Minerals Gazette and Industrial Minerals.

JKTech have long supported MEI and I thank them for their continued involvement.

Today was the first day of the CIM exhibition and there was a large turnout of exhibitors even if, like the SME in February, the hall sometimes felt a little empty of delegates.






Still it was nice to catch up with a few familiar faces, this photo shows Alex Montgomery of Starkey & Associates with Hans von Michealis.





What struck me most at this conference was not the number of attending exhibitors but the familiar names that weren't exhibiting. In the tough times that we are presently going through I would have thought that most companies would want to send at least a skeleton staff just to show that they are still around.




David Almond from FLSmidth Minerals

The other thing that left me perplexed was that there was a sponsored lunch in the exhibition hall that I was asked to pay $20 for! Needless to say, the hot-dog van outside the venue seemed to be doing a very good trade!




Carsten Gerold from Loesche GmbH


The exhibition however had a nice relaxed atmosphere and there was evidently a lot of networking taking place. Nowhere more so than around the South Australia stand who were handing out wine for the price of a business card. WorleyParsons did well to have their stand next door!




Chris Webb of WorleyParsons

CIM, Toronto, Canada

Tomorrow I will be at the CIM registration which starts at 6pm and then on Monday I will be in the exhibition area so I look forward to bumping into anyone who may be around.

Today it is raining but yesterday was a beautiful day and the view from the top of the CN Tower was breathtaking. If you are in Toronto and have never been up the Tower then this is something that should be at the top of your list of priorities (weather permitting of course!)

Jon

CIM Conference, Toronto

If you are at the CIM meeting next week, look out for Jon. He will be in the exhibition area on Monday.

How many mineral processors are out there?

I don't know how many active mineral processors there are worldwide, but today's MEI newsletter has gone out to a record 7500 subscribers, surely a fair proportion of the world's total?

Falmouth in the spring

Falmouth is never more beautiful than at this time of year, as evidenced by these photos taken today

NATO Conference, 1986

Further to my posting of April 24th, I have dug out the group photograph taken at the NATO Conference in Falmouth in 1986.

See how many well known faces you can spot! Double click the image to retrieve the full size photograph.