January's Cornish Mining Sundowner

Cornwall's capital city, Truro, was the venue for last night's sundowner, attended by around 25 regulars at the County Arms Hotel.

I was pleased to see Dave Dew and Pete Walsh, two of the Camborne School of Mines class of 1979, the first mineral processing graduates. Dave will be presenting the first keynote lecture at Biomining '20 in Falmouth next June. He will be discussing the limitations to the commercial application of biohydrometallurgy for the treatment of base metal ores and the rise of chloride heap leaching as a competitive technology.

With Dave and Pete

Dave, of Dewality Consultants, will also be a co-author of a paper discussing aspects of the bioleaching of a pyrrhotite-pyrite ore, with CSM's Professor of Sustainable Mining, Karen Hudson-Edwards (3rd right below).

Also in Falmouth in June will be CSM's Prof. Frances Wall (2nd right below) who will be co-author of a paper at Sustainable Minerals '20 overviewing the work in Cornwall on the MIREU Project. The project aims to establish a European mining network, involving 30 partners from 17 regions, and identify methods to ensure the continued sustainable supply of mineral raw materials throughout Europe.

Frances is currently much involved with the launch this week of the HiTech AlkCarb EU project outreach activity, ‘Technology Metals for a Green Future’. This on-line course is free to join and is aimed at non-specialists. So mineral processors might like to find out about geology and responsible sourcing, for example. Participants can do as much or as little of the course as they like. Over the four weeks, the leaders will explain what technology metals are – i.e. all the specialist metals like rare earths, lithium, cobalt, tin, tungsten, indium – that are essential now in low carbon and digital technologies (and which will be profiled at MEI's Hi-Tech Metals '20 in October). How ore deposits form will be covered in week 2, how they are mined and processed in week 3, and in week 4 the issues of responsible sourcing and making a circular economy.

It was, as always, an interesting sundowner, and the next one is in Falmouth, at the Chain Locker, on Thursday 20th February, at the usual start time of 5.30 pm.

But before then, as a number of our group will be in Cape Town in a couple of weeks time for Mining Indaba 2020, there will be a sundowner on Monday February 3rd on the Cape Town waterfront. We invite anyone with a Cornish mining connection to join us at the Ferrymans Tavern, from 5.30pm.  Photos from previous sundowners at the Indaba are shown below.

Cape Town 2004

2005

2016

@barrywills