Chris Rule to present keynote lecture at Comminution '20

We are pleased to announce that Chris Rule, an Independent Consultant with Seymet Pty Ltd, South Africa, and a Director of MEI's Industry Advocate, CEEC, is to present a keynote lecture at Comminution '20 next year.



Chris Rule, with his daughter Jessica, of Cenotec, and Brian Chaponda, of Lonmin, at Comminution '18

Chris graduated from RSM, Imperial College London in 1979 with MSc and DIC in Extractive Metallurgy and BSc (Hons), in Mineral Processing at University College Cardiff. He has been involved in minerals processing, primarily in the PGM industry since 1980. Roles include Impala Platinum, Genmin, BHP and Anglo American, including senior operating management positions in South Africa and Zimbabwe; interspersed with periods in development, process design and project execution for concentrating, smelting, base and precious metal refining for plant installations. He formerly led Concentrator Technology at Anglo American Platinum, responsible for technical operational support, process plant design and optimization and technology development.

Chris has been heavily involved in initiating and leading a number of fine grinding projects using stirred milling in both mainstream regrind and flotation concentrate regrind applications; mostly IsaMill technology. His areas of interest include sensor sorting of ROM ore, development work with HPGR circuits, multistage energy efficient ore processing circuits and mineralogical routine analyses on plant samples.

Entitled "the slow journey to practical energy efficient comminution" the keynote will highlight comminution as the most energy intensive of all mineral processing requirements. The greater proportion of lower grade and more complex mineralogical ore resources exploited has exacerbated this over time and energy per tonne processed from the mine, and finer grinding for liberation of values from gangue, have been driving this trend.

The pressures on energy generation and use, both from an environmental and financial perspective grow continually. The South African scene clearly demonstrates the dilemma facing energy intensive industries, the demise of Eskom and its continual demand for relatively high annual rate increases illustrating the threat to the mining industry.

Chris will show how, despite some new emerging technologies gaining a foothold in the industry, progress in limiting this higher energy intensive trend has been small. The road map for a combination of known and demonstrated ore pre-concentration and more efficient size reduction technologies will be described, but the reluctance of industry to move away from established flowsheets and to new combinations of processes remains the single largest barrier to change.  Chris will discuss recent trends in new concept flowsheets and will ask where will the major changes be seen in the near future?

See #Comminution20 for the latest updates on the conference.