In Conversation with Alban Lynch, the first Director of the JKMRC

International Mining magazine's inaugural Hall of Fame took place this year at the SME Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City. Among the legends of the minerals industry profession who were honoured was Prof. Alban Lynch, one of the giants of comminution. This was one of many awards that he has received in his long and distinguished career. He is an Officer of the Order of Australia, and in 2010 in Brisbane received what is considered to be mineral processing's top award, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Mineral Processing Congress.

Alban Lynch (left) receiving the IMPC Lifetime Achievement Award
from Eric Forssberg, Brisbane 2010

I first met Alban in 1986 when he presented a keynote lecture at the NATO ASI in Falmouth. He and his wife Barbara live in Brisbane, and I phoned him recently to talk about his career and to hear his views on modern mineral processing and how he sees the future progression of our industry.

Alban Lynch was born in Queensland in 1930 and worked as an industrial chemist in the paint industry from 1947-1953, while studying part-time for a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from Sydney Technical College. After graduating in 1954 he took up a position as a metallurgist at Zinc Corporation, Broken Hill, as his fiancée Barbara was from there, and studied for a BSc and MSc as an external student at the University of New South Wales.

He spoke about Maurice Mawby who came from Broken Hill, and described him as "one of the real greats". Mawby was very much involved with the development of flotation and he ascended from metallurgist to Chief Executive and set up the great years of Conzinc Riotinto Australia, which became Rio Tinto Australia. Alban remembers him as a man with a remarkable memory who would walk around the plant at Broken Hill recognising everyone and asking about their families. It must have rubbed off on Alban, as this is exactly what T.C. Rao, who obviously had great respect and affection for him, said about him in our recent conversation. Alban remarked that he and Rao "had many an argument on a Sunday afternoon, which Rao always won!"

In 1958 Alban joined the Dept. of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Queensland (UQ), where he would remain for most of his long career, spending the first 12 years as a Research Officer for mineral processing operations, and being awarded a PhD in the department in 1965.

His arrival at UQ was at an opportune time, as by 1960 the first mineral boom in 30 years was forming and in 1961 the Australian mineral industry, through the newly formed Australian Minerals Industry Research Association (AMIRA), established by Maurice Mawby, decided to fund jointly sponsored research to improve mining and mineral processing technology.  Mawby had set up a special projects laboratory at Broken Hill, which he staffed with 12 engineers, as he knew that technology had to change in the mining industry. In 1962 a three year AMIRA project on grinding started at UQ with a group consisting of Alban, two graduate students and two technicians. The theme of the research became the modelling and simulation of grinding circuits. Jim Foots, the General Manager at Mount Isa Mines Ltd, supported the work by permitting the circuits in its old concentrator to be experimental test sites and this was the start of the tradition of project research being plant based and of graduate students, including T.C. Rao, spending months at plants on thesis projects which had the objectives of improving local circuits and providing data to support the general programme on modelling and simulation. Funding of the project has been renewed periodically for 50 years, in what is now the P9 project, although changes have occurred in its scope and size.

By 1967 mathematical models had been developed for rod mills, ball mills and hydrocyclones and simulation of a copper circuit containing one rod mill, three ball mills and six hydrocyclones indicated a proposed rearrangement which, when made, resulted in a large increase in capacity. Similar simulation work with the rod mill, 2 ball mill, 2 rake classifier circuit at Zinc Corporation in Broken Hill had a similar result. By this time Bill Whiten had joined the group and brought much needed computing skills. During the next seven years research extended to modelling of crushers and screens at Mount Isa, autogenous mills at Tennant Creek, and banks of flotation cells at Mount Isa and Philex Corporation in the Phillipines, and to the control of grinding circuits using a PDP8/I computer provided by AMIRA. This culminated in the publication of one of Alban's most well known books, Mineral Crushing and Grinding Circuits.

Alban Lynch with AMIRA computer, early 1970s

In 1971 the research group was given strong encouragement by MIM Holdings Ltd when the company established the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) to be its Brisbane base, with Alban Lynch its first Director, a position he held until 1989, when he handed over to Dr. Don McKee, allowing Alban to concentrate on his new role as UQ's Professor and Head of Mining & Metallurgical Engineering, a position he held until 1993. (Click here for a biography of Julius Kruttschnitt, who Alban regards as another outstanding figure in the history of Australian mining). 

By 1974 the modus operandi of the JKMRC group was well established and its research activities in modelling were extended to coal flotation in the Bowen Basin mines and crushing at the Mount Newman iron mine and the Bougainville copper mine. The establishment of the JKMRC made Alban "realise the importance of graduate students working in plants- to get anywhere in mineral processing you don't spend your time fiddling around in laboratories and the students realised that this was a great opportunity for them, and the mines were very supportive".

In 1975 the decision was made to extend modelling research to blasting because that was the first in the sequence of size reduction processes. The feasibility study was carried out with support from Mount Isa and Mount Newman and the blasting project became a large and long running AMIRA project. The research was very useful to blasting engineers but it was many years before the link between blasting and crushing and grinding was developed. Alban strongly believes that mineral processing in the future needs to be linked to mining, and he talked with enthusiasm of UQ's Gideon Chitombo, a Zimbabwean "who is a superb public speaker, and who is also wrapped up in the future of mining and has set up projects funded by many major mining companies". Gideon recognises that mining must take into account mineral processing, and he will be presenting a plenary lecture on this, hopefully followed by a forum, at the IMPC in Santiago in October.

By 1980 models of grinding and flotation circuits were well developed and another book was published Mineral and Coal Flotation Circuits, co-authored with N.W. Johnson, E.V. Manlapig and C.G. Thorne. Many short courses were given on modelling, but simulation could not be used widely because engineers did not have easy access to bureau type computers. Personal computers were becoming available so a project was established to put the models on a PC. To demonstrate the validity of the modelling work and debug the programme the engineer who wrote the software spent 6 months with the PC at plants of AMIRA sponsors in USA and 6 months with sponsors in Australia. This was the origin of JKSimMet, which he feels was so successful because "a guy called Dave Wiseman wrote it. He had a lot of experience at Mount Isa, so he knew what was needed from a simulator". Knowing Dave well, I could understand Alban's praise for him, and his ability to keep things simple, a failing of many modern models, which have become so complex and difficult to understand that they are not easily accepted by operators. I remarked that often at conferences I get the impression that academics are talking to each other, but that the people at the 'sharp end' are not truly involved.

Dave Wiseman keeping it simple for me in Seattle, 2012

It was interesting to hear that he is "very sceptical about where SAG mills have gone, I think they have taken us along the wrong track. They may be attractive in terms of high productivity, but their energy efficiency is poor, and I feel that these immense machines are going to turn into very large ball mills". 

Although he has been involved with hydrocyclones for very many years he feels that "the way they are used now is an absolute nonsense, with circulating loads in some cases of well above 200%. The future is high frequency screens". He and Hakan Dundar from Hacettepe University, Turkey, have analysed data from several large operations and "it is very clear that these screens are so much better than hydrocyclones and there will be a paper on this at the IMPC in October". It is interesting that the new tungsten mine in UK will be operating their ball mills in closed circuit with Derrick screens, rather than hydrocyclones, and we will be hearing more of this at Physical Separation '15 in Falmouth.

After 6 years as Head of Department at UQ. Alban spent a large portion of the next 15 years lecturing on modelling and setting up research programmes in other countries, notably in Malaysia, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey. The most successful was concerned with cement clinker grinding in Turkey where the research group has expanded from one graduate student in 1999 to 3 staff and 8-10 graduate students in 2009. Following the pattern developed at JKMRC the dry grinding group at Hacettepe University works closely with the cement industry and is expanding its activities into related areas.   He regards Hacettepe as being "far and away the best mineral processing University in Turkey, for exactly the same reason as why the JKMRC became so successful- the students are prepared to go out on plants and actually do the work, whereas this does not happen at the other Turkish Universities".

He also found time during this period to co-author two more books, in 2005 The History of Grinding, with Chester Rowland, and the latest in 2010, The History of Flotation with Greg Harbort and Mike Nelson.

Launch of History of Flotation at the 2010 IMPC in Brisbane,
with Mike Nelson and Greg Harbort

His latest project is a Handbook on Comminution, with the AusIMM, which he hopes will be available at Comminution '16 in Cape Town. He is also involved, with the AusIMM, in the development of a virtual museum at Broken Hill, recording the town’s mining industry and its great contributions to mineral processing technology.

Talking to Alban Lynch was a great pleasure and privilege and I hope that his interesting views on mineral processing will lead to some open debate.

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