Comminution '10 is the biggest yet

A wonderful sight awaited us this morning on our very early arrival at the conference centre- Table Mountain bathed in the golden glow of dawn.

The 7th MEI Comminution conference got off to a good start. This is the biggest of the 7 conferences in the series, the last one in 2008 in Falmouth attracting 157 delegates.

Jon opened the conference (see YouTube for video), welcoming our 165 delegates from 23 countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Italy, Japan, Mauritania, Poland, S. Korea, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, USA, Zimbabwe.

Prof. Malcolm Powell, of Australia's JKMRC, and MEI's comminution consultant, then introduced the chairmen for the first session, which was dominated by papers on fundamentals and modelling of breakage, with 4 papers from the University of Cape Town on the relatively new mineral processing application of positron emission particle tracking (PEPT). UCT now has a very strong comminution research centre, thanks being due a lot to their links with Australia's JKMRC. UCT has a very strong presence at the conference, with 13 staff and students registered.

The afternoon session dealt with the performance of grinding circuits and the influence of external classification devices. It was nice to see Dr.Megan Becker, who called in late afternoon to discuss her consultant role in November's Process Mineralogy '10, also being held at the Vineyard.

There is much to look forward to over the next few days, with cutting edge developments in machines and processes, and new developments in techniques such as DEM and PEPT. For the first time we have delegates from the European Patents Office in Germany (pictured left with Amanda), who are keen to gain insights into the latest state of the art technologies. We have invited all delegates to add their comments to each day's blog posting and, of course, the invitation is also extended to blog readers who are not at the event.