Flotation '21: Day 3 update

Wednesday 10th November

The day started with a short session on reagents for PGM ores, with 4 presentations, not surprisingly from South Africa, the largest producer of platinum in the world by a significant margin, with a production of between 148 and 120 metric tons each year from 2010 to 2020. As with all the presentations, the abstracts are available for viewing via the conference website.

This session was followed by 6 presentations on fine particle flotation given by presenters from France, Germany, Japan, Norway and UK, with collaborations from co-workers in Brazil, Iran, Pakistan and South Africa.  The topics were wide ranging, including carrier flotation, eco-friendly surfactants for fines flotation, Positron Emission Particle Tracking, microbubbles and nanobubbles, and assisted dispersion by chemical and ultrasound in the flotation of iron ore slimes with a new amidoamine collector. 

In the first of the two afternoon sessions there was an eclectic array of 5 papers from Australia, Germany, Republic of Korea, UK and USA on modelling and simulation.  A very specialised session, with presentations on machine learning algorithms, regression algorithms, dynamic and particle-based models. All a bit over my head, but I was pleased to see Dr. Osvaldo Bascur making his MEI debut with a paper on Integrated Rock Processing Strategies on Net Metal Production and Flotation Recovery. Osvaldo, a consultant fellow with Seeq Advanced Analytics, USA, was a subject of one of my MEI interviews and he will be giving a keynote lecture at IntegratedMinPro '22 next June. 

This intense short session was followed by an unscheduled short break due to the conference's only no-show, so I took some time off to wander round the exhibition. There are 17 companies exhibiting, including MEI, and although a virtual booth can never be a substitute for a physical presence, it is a relaxing experience to "drop into" a booth, browse the brochures, watch videos and find out what the company is all about. If representatives from the company are available then a live meeting can be arranged. If not then all the representatives from the company are listed in the Meeting Hub, where invitations to connect can be made. Personally I found the exhibition to be a useful experience, but would welcome the views of exhibitors and delegates.

Back at the conference, the final session of the day was control and instrumentation, with eight presentations from Australia, Finland, Germany, South Africa and USA, including two from conference sponsors CiDRA Minerals Processing, USA and Festo, Germany, whose virtual booths I visited during the break.

The photo below shows the Festo booth at Flotation '19. On the right is Thomas Bertsch who, with his colleague Dr. Eckhard Roos, explained today how new automation concepts can be implemented in an existing overall automation system. 

CiDRA Minerals Processing are long time sponsors of the comminution series as well as flotation, but for Alessandra Castillo, who presented a paper today, this was only her 2nd MEI conference, having attended Flotation '19. She discussed how the biggest leaps in technology have historically occurred in the face of crises, and today is no exception. Over the past 18 months, every industry has been touched by the technological megatrends of intelligence, connectivity, and flexible automation. As a result, mining operations around the world finally value data as an asset and are prioritising technology that provides new knowledge for data driven decision-making.

Alessandra at Flotation '19 with her co-author today, Joe Felix (left)
of Felix Project Management and Consulting Services C.C., South Africa 

Other topics discussed in this long session were monitoring of flotation cells using drag sensors and other tools; control by real-time measurement; measurement of foam composition by ultrasonics; improving kinetics by acoustic sound; optimisation using on-line mineralogical data; measuring turbulence using electrical resistance tomography.

#Flotation21
@barrywills