Flotation '19: the final day

Time has flown by and sadly today is the day we must say au revoir to all our delegates.

A last chance also to take a final look at the exhibit booths, where there has been a lot of activity over the four days.

Fangli Zhou has represented Chinese company Kopper Chemical Industry, who specialise in copper flotation, particularly in difficult to float oxide ores. She is pictured below with Lian Cao of University of Queensland and Jianyong He, of Central South University, China.

Sam Ayoub (left in photo below) is from Continental Engineering Services, Australia, a subsidiary of French company Continental Industrie, which manufactures multistage centrifugal blowers specially designed for flotation applications. 

Gold Ore is a new company, sponsoring an MEI conference for the first time, and represented by Adrian Singh (left below). Gold Ore markets the patented and proprietary MACH Reactor technology which is a cavitation unit that generates picobubbles that nucleate on hydrophobic particles, this concept of particles giving birth to bubbles being the key to the improved flotation of fine to ultrafine particles. 

Last month I was in Germany, visiting the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg, a constituent part of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, so I was pleased to see so many of them in Cape Town.

Passing by the booth of conference sponsor Zeiss, I saw Zeiss representative Ania Botha in conversation with Kari Heiskanen and Graeme Jameson.

Clariant is also a sponsor, and Shani Engelbrecht was in conversation with a number of delegates.

Finally, passing by the Maelgwyn Minerals Services booth, I was pleased to see Jon, and Mike Battersby sealing MMS's sponsorship of Flotation '21. Then a few minutes later, shaking on the same deal with Chris Greet of regular sponsors Magotteaux.

Over the past few days, Chris Greet of Magotteaux and MEI's consultant Jim Finch, aided in no small way by Jim's wife Lois, have been judging the student poster presentations. 

After much deliberation, the prizes of the 2nd edition of the AusIMM's Flotation Plant Optimisation, edited by Chris Greet, were awarded for the best displays in each symposium. 

The fundamentals award was to Wonder Chimonyo, of University of Queensland, for his paper on the effect of structure features of oxidised starches on the depression of chalcopyrite and graphite. 

The applications award was made to Bruno Michaux, of Helmholtz Institute Freiberg, Germany, for his paper on the simulation of flotation plant performance under varying process water consumption. 

Bruno, Chris and Wonder

Glencore Technology also presented a prize of an iPad to Benjamin Kalokoni, of Axis House, South Africa, as a result of a survey carried out at their Sunday workshop. Reactor/separator cells such as the Jameson Cell have been shown to have a smaller footprint and less residence time than conventional cells,  but take-up of the new type is still modest.  The old column cell or tank cell is still a popular choice. The survey basically asked the question "why"?

Benjamin with Glencore's Virginia Lawson

Winding up the conference, Jim Finch gave his usual excellent summary, after which MEI's Amanda Wills closed the conference, inviting everyone back to the Vineyard for Flotation '21, from November 8-11, 2021, and to the Vineyard gardens for a final top-up of wine.

An unusual sight - light rain at the final sundowner

We have had a great 4 days- hope you have too, and we welcome your feedback.

@barrywills