Memories of Reagents '91

Reagents '91 delegates at CSM

Twenty years ago today, Reagents '91 commenced in Cornwall, at the Camborne School of Mines. It was the first of what would become a series of MEI Conferences on reagents, which ran until 2006, to be superseded by the biennial Flotation conferences.

The conference was attended by over 60 delegates from 17 countries, and it is interesting to look back at the delegate list and see who was there. Notably Antonio Peres, of Minas Gerais University in Brazil, who I believe has attended more MEI Conferences than any other person. He will be presenting papers in two month's time at Flotation '11, as will Dee Bradshaw, who is now a Professor at the JKMRC in Australia, and is one of  MEI's flotation consultants. In 1991 Dee was a post-graduate student at the University of Cape Town, and Reagents '91 was her first international conference. Dee is pictured 3rd left, on the Mozley boat trip on the River Fal, which was a regular feature of the conferences during the lifetime of Richard Mozley. Second left is Jules Aupiais, a regular attendee at the flotation conferences, and his company, Senmin an ongoing sponsor. On the far right of the photo is Leon Lorenzen, who was then at the University of Stellenbosch, and is now Executive Metallurgical Consultant with the Snowden Group in Australia.

The photo on the right was taken at the Heron Inn, off the River Fal, and left to right are T.C. Rao, of the Indian School of Mines, M.S. Prasad of the University of Minnesota, USA, Shouci Lu, of Wuhan Iron & Steel University, China and T. Wakamatsu of the University of Kyoto, Japan. It is interesting to read Dr. Prasad's conference paper on recent trends and applications of reagents in the minerals industry, to see how things have developed in the past 20 years. His paper is one of 24 published in Volume 5 nos. 3-5 (1992), a special conference issue of Minerals Engineering.