International Coal Preparation Congress

I have received this photograph from my old friend Prof. Gulhan Ozbayoglu, who I first met at the NATO Advanced Study Institute in Bursa, Turkey in 1984. She is pictured with Doug Jenkinson, who I have not seen since the 1992 International Mineral Processing Symposium, also in Turkey, at Antalya.

Gulhan was chairman of the organising committee of the 17th International Coal Preparation Congress (ICP), held between 1st and 6th October in Istanbul. Doug is the UK representative on the International Organising Committee. This was the first time that an ICPC was organized in Turkey since the 1st ICPC in 1950 in Paris, France.

The ICPC has been organized every four years under the leadership of the International Organizing Committee (IOC). Starting with the 17th ICPC in 2013, the ICPC's will be held every three years, the next scheduled for St. Petersburg, Russia in 2016.

Generally, the topics discussed in the ICPC's cover a large area from characterization of the coal to waste disposal but topics related to water use/reuse have attracted increasingly more attention in recent years. In this regard, dry processing and dewatering seem to continue to be of great interest in many areas of the world.

Around 525 participants from 25 different countries attended the congress and 121 papers selected from around 230 abstracts were presented in two parallel sessions during the four days of the congress. Selected papers will be published in a special issue of  International Journal of Coal Preparation and Utilization.