More good news for Cornwall at the July mining sundowner

A warm summer evening attracted over 30 mining folk to last evening's Cornish Mining Sundowner at Falmouth's Chain Locker. We were pleased to welcome to her first sundowner Maureen Atkinson, widow of former Camborne School of Mines (CSM) Director Prof Keith Atkinson who sadly died last August (posting of 6th August 2017).

Maureen Atkinson (2nd left) with Linda Shimmield, Barbara Wills and Joan Oliver

There are always surprises at these sundowners, and no more so last night than the very welcome appearance of Glen Corder, from the Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) of the University of Queensland (UQ). Glen was accompanied by Talitha Santini, formerly with SMI, now with the University of Western Australia. They have been in Cornwall this week for the UQ-University of Exeter workshop for sustainable critical minerals, and working on potential collaboration with CSM. Glen and Talitha are pictured below with CSM's Frances Wall, who will be presenting a keynote lecture at Process Mineralogy '18 in November.

Frances, Talitha and Glen

Also nice to catch up with Dave Goldburn, Business Development Manager at Holman-Wilfley Ltd, and to thank him personally for their recently announced sponsorship of Physical Separation '19 in Falmouth next June.

Dave Goldburn (right) with retired mineral processor Steve Barber

It was good to talk to James Strong of Comminution '20 sponsor Grinding Solutions Ltd (GSL), to find out more of their alliance with Arq, who has committed to invest in a new technology and innovation centre at GSL to benefit from its hard rock ultrafine grinding technology and fine particle science culture to apply it to coal and fuels.

Arq will apply the cross functional use of long-standing minerals processing capabilities to optimise its own breakthrough energy technology which transforms the discard produced by coal mines into a new source of low cost energy. This novel process, Arq Technology™, involves the reclamation of extracted materials from coal mining underflow or legacy discard and then grinding it down to particles of 5 microns or less which can then be separated into over 99% pure hydrocarbons and inorganic material (ash). This microfine hydrocarbon (Arq Fuel™) is said to be far more valuable than traditional coal because it can contain less than 1% ash and almost no water.  This increase in value has the potential to change the face of the coal business across the world and Arq has partnered with GSL to develop and manage the Arq Technology Centre which has additional scope for future expansion.

James, who is commercial manager of GSL, said last night:  "We are proud to partner with Arq whose exciting new technology is set to change the global energy industry. The Arq Technology Centre leverages Grinding Solutions’ culture of innovation, expertise and experience and we are excited to transfer established technology from adjacent industries to make the world’s resources go further".

GSL continues to expand, and now has a force of 16 at its premises near Truro, which includes 12 metallurgists. In the last couple of weeks two new technical personnel were added to the staff, Adam Skitt, a Project Metallurgist back from working in Australia and Teresa Norejko, a Junior Chemical Engineer who recently obtained an MEng in Chemical Engineering, and it was good to welcome Teresa to her first sundowner. GSL are also constructing new laboratory and office facilities which will open later in the year and will continue to add to the staff to support this growth.

With GSL staff John Rumbles (metallurgist), Debbie Partridge (Business Administrator),
James Strong, Teresa Norejko and Jamie Goodship (Junior Metallurgist)

All in all an excellent sundowner, and apologies that I did not get round to photographing everyone- Barbara says I was talking too much (a touch of irony there!).  Anyway, we hope to catch up with everyone again at the next sundowner, at the Chain Locker again, on August 16th, starting 5.30 pm.

Twitter @barrywills