Thursday 22 April 2021

Comminution '21 Day 4 update

Thursday 22nd April

It was good to have Joe Pease, of Mineralis Consultants, Australia on Tuesday's panel discussion. Four years ago he and his colleague Bill Johnson (posting of 27 August 2020) were inducted into the International Mining Hall of Fame, for their pioneering work in bringing stirred milling into the minerals industry in the mid-1990s.

Joe Pease (left) with Bill Johnson

Stirred mills were introduced into the minerals industry for ultrafine grinding of refractory ores, but their use is now being extended into coarser size ranges, the subject of a paper this morning by Monday's keynote speaker Chris Rule.

It is difficult to overestimate the impact that stirred milling has had on comminution circuits, and the morning session contained 9 presentations on stirred mills and their associated ceramic media, from Australia, Canada, France, South Africa and UK, including two from conference sponsor Keramos, an Australian based company with over 20 years experience in the manufacture and supply of cutting edge ceramic grinding media into the mining and minerals industries.

Media for stirred mills is now a very competitive business, and apart from Keramos, there are three more dedicated suppliers exhibiting, sponsor Dakot from South Africa, and two from China, sponsor King's Beads, and Betterwear New Material, a welcome new company to the comminution series. It was interesting to browse their brochures in their booth.

The final session of the conference, on Mills and Circuits, began with a presentation by Glenn Stieper, of conference sponsor Glencore Technology, Australia. He stressed that as resources degrade towards complex ores, larger plants and throughputs are needed to achieve the same project economics, but this is in conflict with a concurrent demand for better safety, environmental, capital cost, operational cost and energy performance.

To address this conflict, mineral processing must evolve and Glencore Technology has developed a concentrator design that achieves a smaller volume of capital equipment, a lower profile and footprint, less environmental impact and greater safety. This is via the marriage of its first 5MW M20,000 IsaMills with a full circuit of new and larger throughput Jameson Cells.

Australia’s Russell Mineral Equipment, a global leader in the design, manufacture and supply of grinding mill relining technologies and services, has made massive contributions to recent comminution conferences, sponsoring and having three exhibit booths and 15 representatives at Comminution '18

This year has been no exception. The company is sponsoring once more, has a virtual booth, and 17 registered delegates, and in the final session a presentation by Stephen Gwynn-Jones on automated mill relining, which was followed by a presentation by Waldo Verster of Multotech, South Africa on mill liner optimisation.

Following a full day of presentations Jon Wills announced the result of the draw for the generous prize donated by conference sponsor Cancha. This was a 12 month subscription to Cancha Geometallurgy Software, including training and support, worth US$2,900. Cancha is an integrated geometallurgical toolkit for sample selection, 3D visualization, model generation, and data analysis and bridges the gap between geological knowledge and comminution simulators. The lucky winner was Ann-Christin Böttcher, of TU Braunschweig, Institute For Particle Technology, Germany.

Jon then brought proceedings to an end by thanking the sponsors once more, as well as all the presenters, exhibitors, and the delegates for being so active in the discussions. All that was missing was an invitation to adjourn to the Vineyard Hotel Gardens for a final drinks function, but hopefully this will happen at Comminution '23.

Memories of Comminution '18

Despite this being our first online conference we have been very pleased with the way that it progressed. The 67 presentations were very professional and there was a great deal of delegate interaction. These discussions can continue for a further 6 months, as the conference will remain online, and we invite further registrations at any time. At the moment there are 213 registered delegates and this number is increasing daily.

We would greatly appreciate your feedback on the event, and invite you to submit your comments and criticisms to this blog post, as your opinions will be of great value to us as we progress to future events.

Thankyou all of you for your support.

@barrywills

22 comments:

  1. Great Conference!
    Johnny Kalala, DRA Global, South Africa

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    1. Thanks Johnny. Good to have you involved

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  2. Thank you Barry and the MEI team! Despite the covid restrictions, Comminution 21 was quite a success.

    We can all sit back now, with a wine glass in hand (or a beer), close our eyes and imagine that we are all mingling around with friends and colleagues at the Vineyards!

    Take care and stay safe all!

    Peter Radziszewski

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    1. Wish we were, but at least I am sitting here in Cornwall with a large glass of red.
      Great to have you involved with the conference, not only as a presenter but as a great panelist.
      Look forward to "seeing" you at Sustainable Minerals '21 in June

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  3. Congratulations Barry and MEI team for a great conference! In spite of the many distractions from being at work/home, it was more than worthwhile! Great to see familiar faces as well as newcomers to the field. Happy also to show a bit of our recent work, in particular to those who don´t have time to go look at our recent papers. See you next time!
    Cheers,
    L. Marcelo Tavares

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Marcelo, and great to have you with us, as always. We now look forward to your keynote lecture at Sustainable Minerals '21

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  4. Excellent conference!!
    Christiam E. Vasquez Q., Metalurgista en Antamina, Peru

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    1. Thanks Christiam, pleased that you enjoyed your first MEI conference

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  5. Thanks for organising a great conference Barry Wills and Jon Wills!
    Liz Brown, Mipac, Australia

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    1. Thanks Liz, but I had little to do with it. The hard work was done by Jon and Amanda

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  6. Yes, the "comminution " Conference definitely ended in a very satisfying manner, considering all the constraints due to covid.Compliments to Amanda, Jon, all speakers, sponsors, and participants--I said once, and let me repeat this. Now I must include all those who must have followed Barry's Blog covering so nicely.Proceedings of the fourth day on "ultra-fine grinding" is indeed very important and going to play a major role--as I keep on commenting, recovery of all minerals and their utilization is the only "sustainable way" to keep the mineral industry economically viable and environmentally acceptable to society-. Without minerals, the wheels of progress of the economy will come to a grinding halt"Jencore Technology" --whatever I gathered has a huge potential in countries like India where the land is limited and thickly populated. Hope the mineral industry in India takes a close look at it.Above all, the moot focus of these four days had been  on "future practices"
    I am (  having been in this profession for about 60 years) personally excited that MEI, which has been keeping us all informed and giving us a platform to express freely, did such a great job.
    May we meet soon.

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    1. Thankyou for your kind and pertinent comments TC. Just one thing- by Jencore, I assume you refer to Glencore?

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  7. My apologies for the unpardonable mistake--You are right; Yes, GLENCORE--I hope I hear from them to give my apologies but also to know more about them.
    Barry, I got emotionally excited all these four days--Dr. Lynch talking to me and showing his own interest to know more about this event and talking about the future of our profession.
    Now my apologies to all for my long "Comments"--It does not matter whether one agrees or disagrees but the platform is set to take our "most neglected" specialization to get its due in funding and more youngsters entering into our mineral engineering education and R&D.-so much scope for innovation. 

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  8. Great conference in this difficult time.
    Tapash Bhattacharjee
    Polycorp Ltd

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    1. Thanks Tapash. Good to have you involved

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  9. Congrats on a great conference. I thought the online platform worked really well and contributed to a great experience. The mode in which you conducted it also motivated live participation, which has not quite been my experience with on-line conferences last year, and it all went very smoothly.
    Jacques Olivier, Molycop, Australia

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    1. Many thanks Jacques, we really appreciate your comment, and we hope to see you 'live' in Cape Town next April

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  10. The conference was truly planned and executed extremely well. Your support and quick responses contributed to the success. I would have liked to spend more time during the conference days but it’s not like ‘conferences of old’ where you are away from your office. But surely, I’ll catch up on the recorded presentations.

    We look forward to next year’s event.
    John Viega, CiDRA Mineral Processing Inc., USA

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    Replies
    1. Many thanks for your kind comments John, and for CiDRA's continued involvement in MEI Conferences. Look forward to seeing you in Cape Town, not only for next year's Comminution '22, but hopefully for November's Flotation '21

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  11. Prof. Aubrey Mainza’s summary of the conference can be found on YouTube

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  12. I would like to thank MEI for the very well organized conference. The selection of the different session topics and the related papers were highly informative.

    The selected platform with all its functions is from my point of view the perfect tool to execute a conference in these challenging times.

    Especially the opportunity to get in contact with the authors and the participants is great.

    Even when a live event will be hopefully feasible in the next year I would really enjoy the feasibility to join the conference in parallel in the same format.

    Please continue in that way.

    Kind regards,
    Uwe Schuh,Thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions, Germany

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    1. Thanks for your very constructive comments Uwe.
      Although we hope to get back to face-to-face meetings soon, we feel that the online aspect is here to stay, and future events will be hybrid, although we haven't worked out exactly how yet.

      What I really liked about the online presentations was the discussion during and after the presentation. As questions and answers were submitted by text, rather than the usual 5 minutes allowed at 'normal' conferences, these discussions were very comprehensive, and it is good to have a record available and active for several months while the conference website is still live.

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