Process mineralogy of unconventional mineral deposits

We are looking forward to November and our first face to face conference since November 2019. Process Mineralogy '22 will be held in Sitges, Spain, and there is now a call for abstracts for this, MEI's 6th International Symposium on Process Mineralogy, currently sponsored by Bruker, Zeiss and Promet101, with our media sponsor International Mining (see posting of 28 March).

With declining ore grades and increased ore complexity process mineralogy is now of vital importance within the mining industry. The application of process mineralogy can be used to solve problems and challenges, and to aid in the optimisation of mineral processing operations, contributing to increased value of ore concentrates produced.

However, how can the knowledge from, and experience with process mineralogy be applied to unconventional mineral deposits? This will be the question discussed in a keynote lecture by Dr. Kurt Aasly, of the Dept. of Geoscience and Petroleum at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

“Unconventional mineral deposits” he will identify as non-metallic industrial mineral deposits, construction materials, and various types of deep-sea mineral deposits. Case examples will be provided from quartz and quartzites used for silicon production, deep-sea minerals, and the pyrrhotite problem in aggregates for concrete. Emphasis will be on important parameters for such deposits, where grades are at different scales than for many metallic ores, or where grade is not even relevant, but other mineralogical properties are crucial for the performance.

Kurt Aasly received his M.Sc. and PhD from NTNU and was appointed Associate Professor of Process Mineralogy in 2012.  His main field of research and teaching is within process mineralogy and geometallurgy, focusing on industrial minerals and iron oxides. He has been project manager for the MarMine project, focusing on technological challenges related to exploitation of seafloor massive sulfide deposits and has also been responsible for establishing a mineral characterisation laboratory, as part of a larger National Research Infrastructure. Recently, Dr. Aasly has been involved in a research project related to characterisation and analyses of minute concentration of pyrrhotite in concrete aggregates.

We look forward to his presentation in Spain.

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