Comminution '20: Call for Abstracts

Comminution '20 will be held at the Vineyard Hotel in Cape Town from April 27th-30th next year. The 12th in MEI's comminution series, this four-day event has already attracted many high profile corporate sponsors and media partners:

MEI's Comminution conferences are established as the main events for profiling cutting edge research and innovation in all aspects of crushing, grinding and ultrafine grinding in the minerals industry.

We strongly encourage a good balance between industrially based and academic research papers showing the benefits of basing practical application on scientific rigour, such as the industrial validation of models and control techniques.

It is well known that comminution is the most energy intensive of all mineral processing operations. 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 importance of conserving energy will be highlighted in the conference's two keynote lectures.

In his keynote lecture Chris Rule, an Independent Consultant with Seymet Pty Ltd, South Africa, and a Director of MEI's Industry Advocate, CEEC, 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, as 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.

In a second keynote lecture Dr. Mike Daniel, an independent grinding circuit consultant based in Australia, will also discuss comminution energy consumption and efficiency and place it into perspective. More specifically he will present how much electrical energy is consumed in the production of various metalliferous and non-metalliferous commodities.

There is now a call for abstracts for Comminution '20. Short abstracts, of no more than 150 words, should be emailed to me by the end of October 2019. If accepted, draft papers will be required and  these will form the unrefereed Proceedings, which will be available to delegates on a USB stick at the conference. Copyright on these papers belongs to the individual authors, and not to MEI.

After the conference authors will be invited to submit final papers, which will be refereed, and, if accepted, published immediately in the first available regular issue of Minerals Engineering, the world's #1 mineral processing journal, and included in the Virtual Special Issue of the conference on ScienceDirect (see VSI for Comminution '18).

As with all MEI Conferences, the timetable will be designed to give delegates ample time for networking in the relaxed atmosphere of the Vineyard Hotel conference centre and gardens. Coffee and lunch breaks will be held in the exhibition area (see exhibition details) and there will be sundowners in the gardens with the backdrop of Table Mountain.

Lunch at Comminution '18

Sundowner at Comminution '18

The conference dinner will be in the grounds of the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, only a 10 minute coach ride from the hotel.

Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

We hope to see you in Cape Town in April and are confident that you will experience something special, as others have done in the past:
 

"Congratulations on a great conference. Good papers, made more powerful by a single stream which meant high attendance at each session, and good long breaks for informal discussions throughout the day, and meals in a spacious vendors area to encourage circulation. A great formula for a conference - quality over quantity, and time for discussion and networking and to keep the energy levels high. I wish all conferences could manage this balance so well."
Joe Pease, Mineralis Consulting, Chairman CEEC

"Excellent seminar, lot of interesting papers from the plant operation, good interaction with key industry players & academics. We shall definitely participate in the next one."
Tapash Bhattacharjee, Polycorp, Canada

"Thoroughly enjoyed the conference, great venue and some very good presentations."
Aidan Giblett, Newmont Mining Corporation, USA

"Comminution '14 not only enhanced my knowledge but also helped me identify solutions to the milling circuit I manage. Some of the discussions we had, we have carried them forward as part of the business process improvements. I also managed to identify with a huge pool of knowledgeable people from across the world. I could not imagine communicating daily and interacting with people from SA, USA, France, Iran, China, Australia and various other countries."
Clifford Farai Mutevhe, Anglo American Platinum, Zimbabwe
 

The latest conference updates can be found at #Comminution20 and the full report on Comminution '18 is online.

Twitter @barrywills