Comminution '18: the final day

A much less intense day today, with 14 papers in the technical sessions, followed by a summary of the conference by Prof. Aubrey Mainza, of University of Cape Town, and MEI's Amanda inviting delegates back to Cape Town in two years' time for Comminution '20 (YouTube).

Australia’s Russell Mineral Equipment has made a massive contribution to this conference, sponsoring, having three exhibit booths and 15 representatives. We are pleased that they have already confirmed their support for Comminution ’20, which will be held at the Vineyard again from April 27th to 30th 2020.

Also renewing sponsorship are Starkey & Associates, King’s Ceramics and Chemicals and Grinding Solutions Ltd. 

Junfu King and Alex Wang of King's Ceramics & Chemicals

Felicity and Nick Wilshaw of Grinding Solutions with John Starkey of Starkey & Associates

Glencore Technology, Australia, have been very impressed with this conference, and have committed to sponsorship not only of Comminution '20, but also Flotation '19 and Hi-Tech Metals '18.

Greg Anderson and Hans de Waal of Glencore Technology

Another early sponsor is Derrick Corporation, USA. They have a booth at Comminution '18 and Nic Barkhuysen, of Derrick Solutions, South Africa (left) and Steve Valine of Derrick Corp., USA (3rd left) are pictured below with Adrian Hinde and Martyn Hay of South Africa.

During the first coffee break Jon was talking to Simon Bailey, now with conference sponsor Keramos. Two years ago Simon was with Grinding Solutions Ltd. Although Keramos is an Australian company, Simon works from home in the UK, in MEI's home town Falmouth.

I caught up with Wilber Churata, MEI's first ever delegate from Bolivia. He is presenting a poster on optimal ball level control in SAG mills using microphones. Wilber is Plant Superintendent at the San Cristobal Mine in Bolivia, where mill control is by sound. The San Cristobal mine is an open-pit silver, lead and zinc mine operated by Sumitomo Corporation, and produces approximately 1,300 tonnes of zinc-silver concentrate and 300 tonnes of lead-silver concentrate per day, by processing 40,000 to 50,000 tonnes of ore. It is one of Bolivia's largest mining facilities and, according to Sumitomo, the world’s sixth-largest producer of zinc and third-largest producer of silver. The mine has been in various stages of development since the early 1980s but only recently came into full operation.

MEI Young Person’s Award winner Grant Ballantyne has played the principal role in the development of the internationally-supported comminution energy curve tool which is hosted on the Coalition for Eco-Efficient Comminution (CEEC) website, and is widely used by industry for energy benchmarking and the optimisation of comminution circuits. He brought his award in today for a photo-call with Directors, Associates and sponsors of CEEC.

Our next Cape Town conference is Process Mineralogy '18 in November, and our consultant for the event, Dr. Megan Becker, of University of Cape Town, called in to update us over lunch today.

Megan with Chris Greet of Magotteaux

It's been a great conference, with 65 oral and 15 poster presentations, and after the final summaries we were back in the hotel gardens for a final farewell wine function.

My final technical report on the 4 days of Comminution '18 is scheduled for April 30th, and we look forward to your comments on this.

Twitter @barrywills