Flotation '21: Day 5 update

Friday 12th November

And so on to the last day of what has been a fine conference, attended by 267 delegates.  Continuing from yesterday, the day opened with 9 presentations on Flotation Circuits and Plant Practice, from Australia, Chile, China, Finland, Mexico and South Africa.

Following the mid-day break and networking session the final session on Flotation Machines contained 15 presentations from Australia, Peru, South Africa, UK and USA, commencing with three papers from Australia on the Reflux Flotation Cell, including its first full-scale trial at a coal preparation plant and its potential in processing other commodities. It could possibly become a generic solution for effectively floating both coarse and ultra-fine particles while maintaining a high throughput.

FLSmidth has, over the years, been one of the most prolific of MEI Conferences sponsors, and Dr. Dariusz Lelinski, one of yesterday's panelists, has been a familiar face at the flotation series of conferences. He co-authored all 3 of FLSmidth's presentations today.

Dariusz Lelinski (2nd left) at Flotation '19

Flotation product line manager Steve Merrill presented 2 of these papers, the first showing how FLSmidth has created and implemented Adjustable Radial Froth Crowders that allow customers to have more control over froth recovery and optimize the process for the variability of froth conditions.

FLSmidth has two main product lines for mechanical flotation machines: the forced-air nextSTEP™ and the self-aspirated WEMCO®. Thousands of these machines have been installed and continue to operate throughout the world and in his second presentation Steve showed how FLSmidth has implemented a row configuration called mixedROW that takes advantage of the benefits of each machine type to increase overall yield in flotation circuits. The new generation of Wemco flotation machines were described in a further FLSmidth presentation by Dr. Ronney Rodrigues Silva.

Maelgwyn Mineral Services, UK is also a long-term sponsor of MEI Conferences, and it was good to see a recent recruit Dr. Huu Duong Hoang present a paper on MMS's Imhoflot pneumatic flotation cell, and its performance in recovering fine gold losses to tailings. I met Huu for the first time 2 years ago at the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology, Germany, where he was one of Dr. Martin Rudolph's team of researchers. Martin was one of the panel members on Monday and many of those in the photo below, taken at Freiberg, have been involved with presentations this week.

Dinner in Freiberg with (L-R) Edgar Schach (Germany), Bruno Michaux (Belgium),
Martin Rudolph, Anna Vanderbruggen (France), Nathalie Kupka (France),
Ahmad Hassanzadeh (Iran) and Duong Hoang (Vietnam)

In search of sustainability, the mining industry faces various environmental, social, and economic challenges, which will be highlighted at next year's Sustainable Minerals '22. Therefore, it is necessary to implement innovative technologies that improve the use of natural resources. One important technology addressing this challenge is the HydroFloat® Coarse Particle Flotation (CPF). As discussed by Jose Concha, products manager for HydroFloat at Eriez Flotation, USA, there has been a growing industrial implementation and acceptance of the CPF technology in tailings scavenging applications, and the next step in the development of this technology is implementation in pre-concentration applications (Coarse Gangue Rejection). Adam Johnston, of sponsor Transmin Metallurgical Consultants, Peru, presented a methodology to make an initial assessment of the cost benefit of introducing the HydroFloat® technology in a flotation circuit in early-stage projects by computer simulation. 

Jose Concha (right) in the Eriez Flotation booth at Flotation '19.

2nd left is Eric Wasmund, co-author of both HydroFloat presentations

Conference sponsor Eriez also manufactures the StackCell® SC-50 High-Rate Flotation Machine, whose industrial application was described at Flotation '19. This afternoon Dr. Erich Dohm presented the results of extensive field testing conducted by Rio Tinto and Eriez to evaluate the operability and performance of a StackCell® SC-50 high-rate flotation machine for recovery of copper and molybdenum from flotation tailings. The field test was conducted at Rio Tinto’s state-of-the-art tailings demonstration plant located within Kennecott Utah Copper’s tailings facility.

It was good to have GoldOre Pty Ltd back for the second time as a sponsor of the flotation series. Adrian Singh, founder and CEO, described the GoldOre Mach reactor, a hydrodynamic cavitation device, and  detailed the results of tests to quantify the impact of the Mach reactor on the recovery of the fine (-25 micron) fraction in floating a platinum-bearing UG2 ore from the Bushveld complex, South Africa. 

Adrian Singh (left) at Flotation '19

In winding up the conference, Jon Wills thanked the sponsors, exhibitors, presenters and all others for their interaction over the 5 days. Prof. Jim Finch will be summarising the conference soon, and this will be available on demand, as will all the presentations and panel discussions, until the end of May 2022.

Jon also announced the winner of the Cancha prize draw. This was a raffle prize of a 12 month subscription to Cancha Geometallurgy Software, worth US$ 2900. Peruvian company Cancha is a first time sponsor of MEI's flotation series, but sponsored Comminution '21 back in April. Cancha is used by geologists, miners, metallurgists and geometallurgists to accurately, efficiently and transparently project metallurgical performance for mineral resources, the geometallurgy software bridging the gap between orebody knowledge and plant simulators. 

Students and academics were not eligible for the draw, as free academic licenses are available any time. The prize came with free introductory training and support, and was won by Maxwell Norris, of Oktedi Mining, Papua New Guinea.

Following all this, we all adjourned to the Vineyard Hotel Gardens for farewell drinks. I wish!  Hopefully we will be doing this at Flotation '23, provisionally scheduled for November 2023.

Sundowner in the Vineyard Hotel gardens at Flotation '19

I would now like to invite all who attended to submit their views on Flotation '21. To those who didn't register, it is not too late. Nineteen delegates have registered during the last few days, to take advantage of all the presentations and panel discussions being available on demand until May 31st next year. So take your time and digest all that has taken place over the past 5 days at your leisure.

Thanks again to all our sponsors:

#Flotation21
@barrywills