Good to be back to face-to-face at the SME Annual Meeting 2022 in Salt Lake City

I was in Salt Lake City last week for the Annual Meeting of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (#MINEXCHANGE2022), my first face-to-face conference since the SME Meeting in Phoenix two years ago. Salt Lake City is the state capital of Utah, the primary global producer of beryllium, the only domestic producer of magnesium metal, and just one of two states in the USA producing lithium used in rechargeable batteries. It is also a major producer of bentonite, gold, vanadium, and famously copper, as the world's largest and deepest open-pit mine, Bingham Canyon, or the Kennecott Copper Mine, a large porphyry copper deposit, is only 30 miles southwest of the city.

Since the blog began in 2009 I have reported on each SME Annual Meeting, apart from last year when the event was held online due to Covid. My reports cover six meetings in Denver, three in Phoenix and one each in Minneapolis, Seattle and Salt Lake City. The last meeting in Utah was in 2014 and attracted what was then a record number of delegates, over 6700, with 539 exhibitors. So in the first major conference in the era of the 'new normal' it was interesting to see what would transpire from this venture into the unknown. 

As always I must emphasise that this is by no means a definitive report of the meeting. It is too huge for that and I avoid the many parallel technical sessions, preferring to stroll around the exhibition area and catch up with old friends and hopefully meet new ones.

This therefore is my personal diary of my two full days at the meeting.

Sunday February 27th
The SME Bookshop is always one of my first ports of call, to see the friendly staff led by Jane Oliver, and to catch up on any new publications, as well as seeing how the 8th edition of Mineral Processing Technology is doing!

SME has just released the Tailings Management Handbook: A Life-Cycle Approach, an important and timely resource, because as long as we have mining and mineral processing tailings and their responsible management will remain at the forefront, with a company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance in part a reflection of how well tailings risks are being managed.

Edited by Kimberly Finke Morrison, the Senior Director, Global Tailings Management, of Newmont Mining, the manual contains the contributions of more than 100 world-renowned experts and delves into the basics of tailings facilities, including life-cycle planning, site and tailings characterization, design and construction, as well as systems and operations of tailings storage facilities.

Opening a successful new mine is a vastly complex undertaking, entailing several years and million to billions of dollars. In today’s world, when environmental and labour policies, regulatory compliance, and the impact of the community must be factored in, mistakes can be very costly. The 2nd edition of Project Management for Mining: Handbook for Delivering Project Success has just been published and is a road map written by two mining project managers with decades of experience in bringing some of the world’s most successful, profitable mines into operation on time, within budget, and ethically. It is in use as course material in universities around the world. In addition, more than 100 different mining companies have sent employees to attend seminars conducted by authors Robin Hickson and Terry Owen, sessions all based around the material within this book.

The SME Bookshop team of Theo Warrior, Jane Oliver and Kendra Elrod

The exhibition opened for a couple of hours late in the afternoon, giving us a chance to experience the 'new normal, as the SME had emailed all delegates to advise that wearing of face masks was mandatory and anyone not complying would be asked to leave the event.

So when I called in at the giant FLSmidth display to meet my old friend Dariusz Lelinski, Global Product Director, who has played a big part in all MEI's flotation conferences, all conversation was behind face coverings. It was good to meet Elizabeth Klestov, who has been in charge of global marketing for over 2 years now, and to have confirmation that FLSmidth will, as always, be sponsoring the next flotation conference, Flotation '23 in Cape Town in November next year.

In the photo below are Dariusz, me, Lance Christodoulou, Steve Merrill and Elizabeth, by the new WEMCO II flotation machine and the REFLUX Flotation Cell (RFC).

The WEMCO II is hailed as the "next generation" flotation machine and was to be launched at Flotation '21, but as the conference was online it is launched this week at SME. Over many decades  the original WEMCO flotation cells built their reputation on delivering the highest recovery. WEMCO II is said to deliver the same benefits as its predecessor, along with changes to the rotor and stator/hood that greatly improve power consumption, air flow and pumping. 

I have dealt with numerous papers for Minerals Engineering over recent years on the Reflux Classifier (RC), which was invented by Prof. Kevin Galvin, of the University of Newcastle, Australia, for gravity separation of fine particles. Kevin will be presenting a couple of papers at Physical Separation '22 in May, including a keynote lecture. 

With FLSmidth collaboration the REFLUX Flotation Cell has been developed from the RC and is on display this week, and although it is the smallest industrial scale version of the RFC it is a very impressive looking device. The RFC operates at a magnitude far beyond the capacity of existing flotation devices, reducing the required installation footprint. Its novel arrangement enhances the hydrodynamics of flotation, with the ability to recover a wide size distribution of minerals at a rate of up to 7-10 times faster than traditional methods. The frothless system allows for stable flotation, enhanced gangue rejection, and quicker kinetics, pushing the boundaries on concentrate grade, recovery, and throughput well beyond the performance of conventional open tank systems. 

Moving on I was surprised to see that most people had removed their face masks, and experience in UK has shown that enforcing face mask rules is almost impossible, so when I stopped off at the booth of Comminution '23 sponsor Derrick Corporation, there was not a face covering to be seen.

Derrick Corporation is a pioneer of wet and dry fine sceening and their latest designs are commonly used now in grinding circuits as alternatives to hydrocyclones.  On display was a section of their SuperStack 8-deck, the highest capacity fine wet screening machine in the world.

The Derrick Corporation team

International Mining is a long term media partner for MEI Conferences, so it was good to catch up with the team, fellow travellers from the UK. Left to right below are Phil Playle. Paul Moore and Daniel Gleeson.

Before leaving the exhibition I caught up with Mark Oles of Eirich Machines, USA, who was discussing Eirich's mixing and fine grinding capabilities with potential clients. He talked about various projects that he has recently undertaken involving the dry and wet grinding of brittle minerals. As richer ores become exhausted finer-grained resources need to be economically processed and Eirich offers the TowerMill, a vertically agitated media mill, as an economical solution. Eirich Machines are part of the worldwide Eirich Group, and were represented at last year's Comminution '21 by Sam Palaniandy of Nippon Eirich, Australia, who presented work on the modelling of the gravity stirred mill. 

Mark Oles (right)in the Eirich booth

Monday 28th February

A full day strolling around the exhibits and hoping for a few surprises. It's a bit like going on safari; you might see nothing, or you might see the 'big five'.

The first sighting was Prof. Erik Spiller, of Colorado School of Mines, and then, shortly after, a student from the same mining school introduced himself to me. Nursultan Fazylgaliyev is from Kazakhstan and studying for an MEng degree before returning to Kazakhstan.

With Erik Spiller

Nursultan Fazylgaliyev

Also good to catch up with Prof. Courtney Young, of Montana Tech. Courtney was the 2021 recipient of the SME's coveted Antoine Gaudin Award, but as last year's event was online he was not able to receive it in person and I was unable to take the usual photo of the award winners.

With Courtney Young

Last year's virtual presentation of the award

Unfortunately, due to too much talking, I missed the awards photo-shoot again this year. The Antoine Gaudin Award recipient was James E. Gebhardt, who is a technical specialist at FLSmidth, USA. He was the first guest editor of the SME journal Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration, which was launched at the SME Meeting in Denver in 2019. He is in the automation section at the minerals technology center for FLSmidth, working on the application of sensors and measuring devices for the minerals processing industry. He is also part of a team developing a comprehensive model of the heap leach process using computational fluid dynamic modeling. 

SME President Barb Arnold presenting a commemorative plaque to Jim Gebhardt,
as guest editor of the new journal, in Denver in 2019

The Milton E. Wadsworth Award  was to Matthew Jeffrey, Director of Processing at Newmont Goldcorp Corporation, USA who I met at the SME Meeting in Phoenix in 2016

Matthew Jeffrey, and his wife Marianne with Ron and Elspeth Woods
in Phoenix, 2016

The Robert H. Richards Award was received by Kathleen A. Altman, CEO and Consulting Metallurgical Engineer at AKA Pros, Inc., USA.

Continuing my tour of the exhibition I talked gravity concentration with Jayden Wright of Mineral Technologies, a world leader in spiral technology. The company designs, manufactures and supplies the MD range of gravity separation equipment including spirals, shaking tables and slurry distribution and laundering systems. The Australian based head office houses the world's largest spiral manufacturing facility and produces over 20,000 starts annually. 

Jayden Wright (left) of Mineral Technologies

Many of the regular companies have downsized this year, not knowing what to expect after the pandemic. The Eriez booth was minus its usual Flotation Division members and even the giant filter press of Tons per Hour, always the biggest piece of equipment on display, had fewer plates than usual.

Eriez representatives

The Tons per Hour filter press

Dr. Marcos de Paiva Bueno is CEO and Founder of Geopyörä, which has been in existence for just over a year. The small company offers state-of-the-art rock breakage characterisation technology which allows mining companies to rapidly test several samples at low cost and generate a large amount of high quality data, which can be used to better assess the ore hardness variability, reduce risks and add value to projects. Marcos presented a paper on this at Comminution '21 and has already signed up to exhibit at Comminution '23 in Cape Town next year.

Marcos has more than 15 years of work and research experience in the fields of mining and mineral processing engineering, having an in-depth knowledge on the design and optimisation of comminution circuits as well as geometallurgy. He completed a PhD degree at the University of Queensland in 2012 specialising in multi-component autogenous and semi-autogenous grinding, and supervised by Prof. Malcolm Powell, who is now Chief Technical Officer for the company.

Marcos has carried out extensive comminution circuit surveys as well as pilot plant campaigns both in Australia and internationally. Working as a senior process engineer for Ausenco he has been involved in technical and engineering studies related to most key mining commodities and, more recently, as a senior researcher and lecturer at the University of Oulu he developed the Geopyörä breakage test with financial support from Business Finland.

A pleasant surprise was seeing and chatting to Robert Seitz, who retired from Freeport-McMoRan in 2016 and who I keep in touch with mainly via social media, as he is a regular contributor to the Minerals Engineers Group on LinkedIn and the MEI Blog. He is now a Director and helps create and teach courses for Metcelerate (posting of 7 December 2020), a workplace-based training program for mineral processing engineers to transform their value to the organisation by translating academic knowledge and skills to practice. It is estimated that less than 10% of what metallurgists need to perform optimally on the job they learn at university. There is a need for practical training to build technical competence and Metcelerate was created by world-leading subject matter experts that have a unique combination of skills, networks, industry and education experience. They have worked and trained across the world solving industry problems and improving mining profitability.

Before leaving the exhibits I had a very interesting talk with Alan Fischer and Bret Cousins in the Corrxan Inc booth. Bret Cousins is CEO of Canadian company Corrxan, which partners with companies to develop new applications in mineral processing for existing chemistry from outside the industry. One of the partners is Alan Fischer's Fischerchem, formed in 2014 in Singapore, a strategic location enabling the company to support mines throughout the Asia Pacific region. Their partnership includes current developments in improved talc depression, fine sulfide particle flotation chemistry, and a mercury precipitant that does not cause silver losses in cyanidation circuits. Both Bret and Alan are keen to be involved in Flotation '23 in Cape Town next year.

Bret and Alan

It has been a very interesting day. To use my safari analogy, mineral processors have been very thin on the ground this year, and no large herds were seen, but the rare sightings made it a rewarding experience. 

Tuesday March 1st

My final day of prowling the exhibition savannah on the hunt for elusive mineral processors. Much of the general talk is about the increasingly dire situation in Ukraine, where the news gets worse daily.

There was a lot of activity around the giant Metso:Outotec display and near there I met Pengbo Chu, who is an assistant professor at the University of Reno, working on the processing of lithium clays and rare earths. He is hoping that he might be able to present something at Sustainable Minerals '22.

Metso:Outotec

Pengbo Chu

Passing the Metcom Technologies booth I was pleased to see Rob McIvor and his colleagues Omar Arafat and Kyle Bartholomew. Rob presented a keynote lecture at Comminution '16. Metcom is a world leader in training and knowledge transfer in mineral grinding circuits.

Omar, Rob and Kyle

It's always nice to catch up with Osvaldo Bascur at SME's. Osvaldo is Principal with OSB Digital, LLC., USA. He is a well known figure at international conferences, and was a recipient of the SME's prestigious Antoine Gaudin Award in 2014. In 2017 Osvaldo was the subject of one of my MEI interviews, and in June will present a keynote lecture at Integration, Optimisation & Design of Mineral Processing Circuits (IntegratedMinPro '22).

With Osvaldo Bascur

And another pleasant surprise- by the FLSmidth display I saw my old friend Guven Onal, formerly mining professor at Istanbul Technical University, now President of the Turkish Mining Development Foundation. I have known Guven for over 35 years, since the first of the biennial Turkish International Mineral Processing Symposia, which was held in Izmir in September 1986. I had the honour of presenting the first paper, on research needs in mineral processing, and Guven was my session chairman.

Guven by FLSmidth's WEMCO II flotation machine

The first session at IMPS 1986, Izmir, Guven is 2nd right

Also in the FLSmidth area was Roe-Hoan Yoon, a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, who was awarded the IMPC's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. Prof. Yoon has been much involved with FLSmidth's MissionZero sustainability programme to reduce emissions in cement and mining to zero by 2030. Cement and mining operations have a significant impact on the environment, accounting for approximately 10% of all CO2 emissions. MissionZero aims to take the lead in bringing these industries into a sustainable future, by helping miners produce more with less resource use and to create a smaller footprint by offering solutions that support zero water waste, zero emissions and zero energy waste by 2030.

Prof. Yoon and FLSmidth's Dariusz Lelinski at the MissionZero display

Moving on I met a fellow Brit, Trevor Sparks of SNC-Lavalin, UK, with his colleague Mark Adams, of SNC-Lavalin, Canada. Trevor is hoping to attend the next Cornish Mining Sundowner in Falmouth.

Mark and Trevor

Passing the Chevron Phillips Chemical booth I noticed Montana Tech's Courtney Young in animated conversation with worldwide sales manager David Miller, metallurgical manager Debbie Laney and product manager JX Loh. Chevron Phillips Chemical provides the Orfom solvent extraction and flotation reagents and Courtney presented work on Orfom D8 as a chalcopyrite depressant in the flotation of Cu-Mo bulk concentrates at Flotation '19. David I first met at the SAIMM Base Metals Conference in Zambia in 2015.

Courtney Young with David, JX and Debbie

My final visit was to catch up with the Solvay Mineral Processing Chemicals team, always a big delegation, highlighting their importance in the field of reagent chemistry. The company was a sponsor of Flotation '21 and intend to sponsor Flotation '23 next year in Cape Town. The company launched its new digital Mining Chemicals Handbook this week at SME. 

And so my safari around the exhibition came to an end. It has been a very rewarding few days in Salt Lake City, and, as always, the SME has proven to be one of the great meeting places for members of our profession. If you were there I invite your personal views of the event. I look forward to next year's meeting, February 26th-March 1st in my favourite venue of Denver.

Thanks to all at SME for the seamless organisation as always.

@barrywills