Comminution '21 Day 1 update

Monday April 19th

Although we had planned to be in Cape Town today, I am greatly looking forward to the next few days, attending MEI's first online conference solely as a delegate. Perhaps fortuitous that we are online as it is 35C in Cape Town at the moment and our thoughts are with Capetonians, and our five delegates from the University of Cape Town (UCT) as their University campus was engulfed yesterday by a raging bushfire on Table Mountain, which jumped the major M3 road between the mountain and the Vineyard Hotel, destroying the 200 year old Moster's Mill, the windmill being a familiar landmark for conference delegates travelling to the conference venue from the airport. UCT's historic library and other buildings have also been badly affected by the fire.

The last 12 months have seen the evolution of conferences into virtual and hybrid events and we’ve chosen the EventsAIR platform for our conferences as we feel that it provides delegates with the most opportunity to connect, which those who have attended one of our events in the past will know is an important feature of an MEI conference.

Despite the difficult circumstances we have a fine technical programme over the next four days, with around 65 presentations from authors from 22 countries, including 3 high profile keynote lectures.  As it is three years since our last comminution conference, Comminution '18, we expect to see and hear of many innovations as comminution continues to evolve.

Comminution '21 is MEI's 12th Comminution conference, and the first at which I have not delivered the welcoming address. That privilege has now passed on to the next generation, and it was Jon Wills who opened the conference this morning, welcoming over 200 delegates from 24 countries and thanking our sponsors, who have supported us all the way as we have had to adapt to this new reality. Without their continued support we would not be here today meeting together online.

Jon opening the conference from Cornwall

Jon highlighted that comminution is one of the most energy intensive operations in mining. Research generally shows that it accounts for around 30-50% of a mine’s overall energy consumption, and in his keynote presentation at Comminution ‘14, Tim Napier-Munn informed us that it accounts for 1.8% of global energy consumption.

This is a shocking amount of energy to be using, and although there are now moves by the industry to use more renewable energy sources, which results in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and increased sustainability, the drive to bring this figure down continues in an effort to reduce operating costs.  

It was appropriate therefore that the first morning was devoted to energy and breakage (see footnote), with Chris Rule, of Seymet, South Africa, starting proceedings by asking in his keynote whether mineral processing operations can make significant energy savings by adopting new technologies and challenging conventional flowsheets?  

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

Chris's keynote was followed by eight papers from Australia, Canada, Germany, Namibia and UK, ending with a presentation related to the question posed in the keynote, Xinyi Tan, of the University of Toronto, asking whether energy savings can really be made by microwave assisted comminution.

During the 40 minute lunch break we had our first speed-networking session, where delegates had the option of being placed at random into a group of maximum 4 participants for 5 minutes, after which we were moved to another group, our way of recreating those random meets over a cup of coffee at a conference!

This I felt was a surprising success, due to its random placement of participants- at an old-fashioned conference groups don't normally meet at random, as people tend to gravitate towards those that they already know. This virtual networking break allowed us to take notes on new potential contacts with the option of scheduling a more formal meeting later via the meeting hub.

I hope more people will join in to the networking session tomorrow as it is a valuable way of "breaking the ice" and building new contacts.

Seven presentations on Control and Instrumentation formed the afternoon session, the last being by CiDRA Minerals Processing, who regularly exhibit at MEI's comminution and flotation events. This year they are one of the 21 virtual exhibitors and I really would like feedback on what exhibitors and delegates think of virtual exhibiting, as it is obviously much different to what we have been used to.

I think a good day in general, and look forward to being back tomorrow

@barrywills

By clicking on any presentation in the programme, you will be able to see the abstract and the biographical details of the presenter. All presentations will be available for 6 months, so you can register for the event at any time.