In memory of Richard Mozley and his wonderful machines

Physical Separation '15 starts one week today in Falmouth. This is the 4th of MEI's Physical Separation conferences, but not the first on this theme to be held in Falmouth. Eighteen years ago this month the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy hosted Innovation in Physical Separation Technologies, a memorial symposium in remembrance of Falmouth minerals engineer Richard Mozley.

Richard Mozley and Roger Parker, 1986

Richard had died two years previously, and on the second morning of Minerals Engineering '95 (posting of 28th May) I had the sad duty of announcing his death to the international audience, and a few days later acting as a pall-bearer at his funeral in the little church at Carbis Bay, close to the beautiful cliff-top golf course where Richard would play regular golf with his friend Roger Parker, Vice-Principal at CSM.

In his keynote lecture at the symposium, the Director of Australia's JKMRC, Tim Napier-Munn, spoke of invention and innovation in mineral processing, appropriately as Richard Mozley was a great inventor and innovator, in the mould of other illustrious engineers in Cornwall, notably Sir Humphry Davy and Richard Trevithick (posting of 25th April).

Richard Henry Mozley MBE was not, however, a Cornishman. He was born in Sussex in 1933, and studied mining engineering at the Camborne School of Mines in the 1950s. During his time there he undertook a final year project with the then head of engineering, Dr. G.H. Jones, who was working on a prototype wet high intensity separator, which evolved into the well-known Jones Separator. This must have ignited Richard's passion for R&D work as he then spent 2 years at the University of Bristol, working on spiral related gravity concentration, leading to the development of the Shaken Helicoid, an orbital concentrator for the recovery of fine tin particles, which was subsequently licensed to the Cornish company Bartles (Carn Brea) Ltd, who went on to sell over 200 units.

A brief spell as a mining engineer with the Indian Copper Corporation, and in 1961 at the Amalgamated Tin Mines in Nigeria, convinced Richard that his future career lay in mineral processing, and he took a position at the Warren Spring Laboratory in Hertfordshire, where he was involved in the development of gravity devices, before returing to Bristol University as a Research Fellow. It was here that his interest in developing gravity concentrators to treat ultrafine cassiterite in the Cornish tin mines took over and he developed a modern separator to replace the round frames and vanners traditionally used in Cornwall. The result was the first machine to bear his name, the Mozley Table, developed further by Bartles and marketed as the Bartles-Mozley Concentrator, initially installed in the Geevor tin mine, and then in many concentrators around the world. As this was essentially a roughing or scavenging device, Richard went on to develop the Bartles Cross-Belt Separator to upgrade concentrates from the B-M Concentrator. Again this was commissioned at Geevor but was soon taken up on several chromite installations in the Philippines and Europe.

After meeting and marrying a local girl, Abigail, Richard settled in Cornwall and took up residence in Falmouth. He joined nearby Hydraulic Tin as a mineral processing engineer in 1971 and became General Manager and Director, but in 1975 he decided to go it alone as an independent consultant, concentrating on inventing and developing processes for recovery of fine heavy minerals. He initially worked from home, and it was always a treat to visit his large house in Wood Lane, Falmouth, and to see Abigail in the kitchen surrounded by centrifugal pumps, pipes and prototype hydrocyclones and other machines. He soon set up Richard Mozley Ltd and in 1986 he and his technical staff moved from Falmouth to new premises in Redruth.

The company initially concentrated on the development of small hydrocyclones for desliming feeds to gravity concentrators, and the sand separator, a development of the conventional shaking table, which was tested at the South Crofty tin mine. This was eventually licensed to GEC Mechanical Handling as the Duplex Concentrator, although Richard Mozley Ltd developed a small laboratory version, the laboratory mineral separator, which I used extensively for testwork at CSM, as did several hundreds of institutions and mine laboratories around the world. The Mozley cyclones also became world famous, particularly the 1 inch and 2 inch diameter plastic hydrocyclones assembled in a high-capacity housing.

I particularly remember Richard talking enthusiastically, over a few beers, about his latest invention, a shaking table wrapped through 360 degrees into a circular drum which was not only shaken, but rotated to produce a high-G force - one of the first of the enhanced gravity concentrators, which competed with the Knelson and Falcon concentrators. To develop this he recruited a bright experienced minerals engineer, Billy Chan, and the Mozley Multi Gravity Separator (MGS) was tested at the Wheal Jane mine, under the supervision of concentrator superintendent Mike Hallewell, and then showcased at the 1988 IMPC in Stockholm. The device has been used successfully around the world for the recovery of ultrafine heavy minerals, and soon made the B-M and Duplex Concentrators redundant.

Stockholm, 1988. Billy Chan demonstrates the MGS, with Sales Manager Don Hepburn and Richard Mozley

At the IMPC in Dresden, 1991, with Richard and his PA Joan Brookes

After Richard's untimely death in June 1995, the company struggled on until it was taken over by Axsia in 2000 and became Axsia-Mozley. When Axsia was taken over a few years later by oil and gas company NATCO it looked like the death-knell for Richard's inventions, but his loyal Executive Director Paul Salter stepped in and Salter Cyclones, based in Cheltenham now proudly carries on the Mozley tradition, concentrating on manufacture and sales of the original Mozley cyclones and of course the MGS, the most recent installation of the 5 tph unit being in Finland at Outokumpu's Kemi chromite mine.

The 5 tph MGS

Richard was a larger than life character who is still sorely missed. I am sure many of you have memories of him, and I invite you to share them. I would also be interested to know if any of his early machines, the B-M Concentrator, the Cross-Belt Separator and the Duplex Concentrator are still in use anywhere in the world. And does anyone know the whereabouts of Billy Chan?