Tuesday was Process Mineralogy day in Falmouth

We had a brief visit yesterday from MinAssist's Dr. Will Goodall and Al Cropp. I first met them when they were involved with Australian company Intellection, which went into receivership in 2008, its QEMSCAN automated mineralogy system assets being acquired by the FEI company (MEI Online). 

Jon with Will Goodall and Al Cropp at MEI

MinAssist Pty Ltd, based in Melbourne, is a progressive young company offering services to the minerals industry in the interpretation of mineralogical information for metallurgical applications. Utilising the expertise of Dr Goodall, founder and Principal Consultant, MinAssist specializes in the characterisation and optimisation of precious metals ores, the current climate of increasingly complex ore reserves making proper understanding of the mineralogy and metal deportment vitally important. This is particularly apparent in the gold mining industry where easily recoverable free-milling deposits are being exhausted and increasingly complex, refractory gold deposits are replacing them.

 Despite being on other sides of the world, Will works closely with consultant Al Cropp, who is based in Cornwall.  Al divides his time between MinAssist and his duties as a Research Fellow at CSM. He is a geologist who has been involved with automated mineralogy for over 7 years. As a student in Industrial Geology at CSM, Al first became involved with CSIRO and the QEMSCAN technology during his honours thesis.   Following the success of his project work, a series of papers were published on the techniques, and Al moved to Brisbane, Australia to aid in the establishment of Intellection by CSIRO, to commercialise the QEMSCAN technology. 

 Will is hoping to present work at Process Mineralogy '14 in November, and we will no doubt see Al at Precious Metals '15, which is being held in Falmouth in 12 months time.

In the early evening I called at the Chain Locker pub (again!) to meet up with Prof. Pertti Lamberg of Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, who was down here briefly to act as external examiner for a PhD thesis on geometallurgy from CSM student Kelvin Anderson, who will soon be returning to Sierra Leone to take up an appointment at the University. Pictured below are Kelvin's supervisor, geologist Dr. Charlie Moon, Kelvin, Pertti, internal examiner Dr. Ben Williamson, and me.

I am pleased to announce that Pertti has agreed to present a keynote lecture at Process Mineralogy '14, and this is an opportune time to remind everyone that the deadline for submission of abstracts, 31st May, is fast approaching.