MEI Young Person's Award for 2015 to Hakan Dundar

After opening Comminution '16 this morning in Cape Town, I had the pleasant task of presenting the MEI Young Person's Award to Dr. Hakan Dundar, an outstanding researcher from Turkey's Hacettepe University. Born on December 13th, 1981, Hakan graduated from Hacettepe, studied there for MSc and then PhD, and then progressed from research assistant to Assistant Professor, with a 6 month spell in Australia with Metso Minerals Process Technology. His fields of research are comminution and classification, focussing mainly on dry processing, although he has also done a lot of work on wet grinding circuits.

With Hakan Dundar and Aubrey Mainza

His nomination is from Prof. Aubrey Mainza of the University of Cape Town:

I would like to nominate Hakan for three outstanding contributions:

In 2015 Hakan made significant contributions to the Comminution Handbook edited by Professor Alban Lynch and published by the AusIMM. No doubt the handbook will assist many upcoming engineers in understanding the principles of comminution and classification because it is written in a single style.

Hakan has completed the development of the high-pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) model for hard rock applications which was undertaken as part of AMIRA P9P Project. To complete the HPGR Hakan collected data from full, pilot and laboratory scale HPGRs around the world treating different hard rock materials. With the HPGR model in place engineers are now able to perform circuit simulations involving HPGRs and assess options for optimisation or design that would benefit the operations.

Hakan has done several studies on reducing energy utilisation and improving capacity in comminution circuits through the use of high frequency screening. He worked in collaboration with Prof. Alban Lynch to obtain data from several plants around the world where high frequency screens have been installed to improve plant performance in terms of energy utilisation and capacity. Some of the findings from this work were presented at the IMPC 2014.

Prof. Mainza's nomination is endorsed by Prof. Alban Lynch:

I strongly support the nomination of Hakan Dundar as MEI Young Person's Award winner.

I have worked closely with Hakan during the last few years and I have been impressed by his knowledge of wet and dry comminution, and by his ability to extend the limits of our knowledge in modelling comminution and classification. An example is our work on high frequency screens which are replacing cyclones for some wet classification duties. Hakan did all the calculations concerned with modelling the screens and the final model will be due to him. He participated strongly in the preparation of the Comminution Handbook and can be expected to be the main editor when the book is revised.

Hakan has also been a leader of the Hacettepe University group which is concerned with modelling dry grinding in cement plants. In my opinion this group is unrivalled with its advanced work on a large and important process. 

The concept of this Award is excellent and I would be delighted if Hakan is a recipient.

Congratulations Hakan, from all at MEI.

Nominations for the 2016 Award should be submitted by February 3rd 2016 (MEI Online).

 

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