In brief

In brief is a new thread to the blog which I hope will be a regular feature. Its success will be dependent on the inflow of news and photos from blog readers, so if you have any news of events etc, accompanied by photos, please send directly to me at bwills@min-eng.com.

Eco Efficient Comminution Workshop

The JKTech’s Diana Drinkwater tells me that the Eco Efficient Comminution workshop, which was run immediately after Metplant ’13 in Perth, went very well, with 16 delegates divided pretty evenly between engineers, vendors and operators. Following on from a theme that emerged during the conference, one of the presenters, Ben Murphy, coined the term “flotatinution” and there was some interesting discussion in the workshop about different ways of designing flotation circuits to minimise comminution energy.

Mick Rogers (Outotec), Alan Faulkner (Donhad),
Danica Clarke (Rio Tinto) and Steve Liddell (BHP Billiton)

Diana continues “We got great feedback from the participants and should definitely do it the same way again, with a few refinements.  Maybe we can make a case for taking something to Flotation’13, with a focus on the “flotatinution” aspect (I promise we will call it something else!).”

Good news on the progress of Jan Miller and Xuming Wang

 As you all know, Prof. Jan Miller and Dr. Xuming Wang of the University of Utah were seriously injured in a recent horrific car accident in Tibet. So it was great to receive this email from Xuming:

“Thanks so much for all the support you have given in prayer and messages.  Every day I am getting better. Now I can walk around freely, and start to read and reply to email.  Barry, your MEI blog is so amazing. Many friends in the mineral processing community knew about the accident. We received a lot of phone calls and messages when we were in China.  They said they knew the news from your blog and their support, prayer and help were really a big encouragement for us at that difficult time.  Dr. Miller is getting stronger. He can walk a little bit every day with a walker.  Many thanks to our friends in our community for their support, prayer, and encouragement. I am sure soon we will be able to serve our community again and make contribution.”

On behalf of everyone in the industry we wish you both speedy and full recoveries.

Our first visitor to the new MEI Office

We moved premises a month ago, and testerday welcomed our first visitor, Tony Clarke, who will be well known to anyone who passed through Camborne School of Mines between 1973 and 1998, when he looked after the mineral processing laboratories and mill. He now researches the evolution of Cornish mineral dressing, and is an enthusiastic volunteer at the excellent King Edward Mine Museum.

  

Tony Clarke with me and Jon

If you are ever in the area do call in and see us. We are only a couple of miles from Camborne School of Mines in Penryn. Our new address is 1 Freeman Collins Drive, Falmouth TR11 2GA.