Report on 2023 SME Annual Meeting, Denver

It was good to be back in Denver again last week, my 10th time at the “mile high city” and my 20th attendance at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME), one of the minerals industry’s greatest networking events (posting of 10th February).

The Colorado Convention Centre, Denver

As always my report is mainly about the people that I met when strolling around the giant exhibition, as it would be impossible to cover the hundreds of papers presented in a multitude of parallel sessions. Over the course of the 3 days I covered around 15 miles and there were many surprise encounters as well as reunions with old friends, which is what makes this event so special.

Sunday 26th February

The two hour opening of the exhibition on the Sunday afternoon is always a good time to catch up with people who may be more involved with the technical sessions during the week. The exhibit booths (803 this year) also tend to be fully manned with representatives who are fully alert before the inevitable lethargy creeps in later in the week.

Outside the exhibit hall I was lucky to catch the three representatives from Metcelerate Ltd, Diana Drinkwater, of Australia, Romke Kuyvenhoven, of Chile and Robert Seitz, of USA, who filled me in on their latest developments.

With Diana, Romke and Robert

Metcelerate Ltd’s training solution, which builds technical competence in the mineral processing workplace for metallurgists and engineers, is delivered by a team of global academic experts and practitioners, and is now into its third intake of learners, with a fourth intake scheduled for mid-2023 and a first intake into the Spanish language programme commencing in April 2023.

The 20-month Metcelerate program consists of a mixture of online course material, live tutorials and practical in-plant exercises. Learning is built around the real problems mineral process engineers face daily. 

The program grew out of a unique industry-academic collaboration. It was clear to many mineral processing leaders that professional development of young professionals was largely ad-hoc and inefficient. In an effort to address this shortcoming, a series of workshops was held in 2019 and 2020 between senior technical staff from mining companies Freeport McMoRan, Newmont and Teck, and Metcelerate’s Diana Drinkwater, Bob Seitz, Jan Cilliers and Brian Flintoff. They began with a needs analysis that included a review of capability requirements, current training activities and perceived gaps. From this an overall program outline was created, with final workshop sessions specifying topics and timelines for the proposed program. In 2022 the team was joined by Romke Kuyvenhoven, who manages the Spanish programme.

Development funding for the program was provided by the mining companies involved in these workshops, and I am pleased that  Metcelerate, one of the sponsors of Flotation '23 in November, recently won the annual IChemE 2022 Global Award for Business Start-Up companies.

Just inside the exhibit hall I met up with Pablo Brito-Parada, of Imperial College, UK, now in his second month as Editor-in-Chief of Minerals Engineering, which he formally took over from me on January 1st (posting of 25th July 2022).

Pablo is in Denver as a representative for next year’s International Mineral Processing Congress in Washington, which will be organised by the SME. He also acts as Editor of the special issues of Minerals Engineering devoted to future MEI Conferences.

There was much activity around the giant booth of Metso Outotec, as there was at the equally enormous FLSmidth display, both major companies sponsoring MEI’s two Cape Town conferences this year, Comminution ‘23 in April and Flotation ‘23 in November.

Metso Outotec

FLSmidth

It’s always good to talk to FLSmidth’s Dariusz Lelinski, who will be in Cape Town in November to show the latest flotation machine innovations, the WEMCO II mechanical cell and the REFLUX Flotation Cell.

A production-scale REFLUX™ Flotation Cell modular plant for mineral processing has recently been shipped for field testing in a copper application. This is an essential milestone in upscaling FLSmidth’s RFC technology towards much faster flotation and higher recoveries compared to the best-in-class technologies. They expect a successful commissioning of the RFC system in an operational environment in 2023 and are proud that their activities are partially funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, a body of the European Union, under Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

I was grateful to Dariusz for introducing me to the new Marketing Manager, Anika Lindstrom, who I also hope will be in Cape Town in November. Dariusz has for many years been the face of FLSmidth, but others come and go. I was surprised to see in the group below Mick McCaslin, formerly with WesTech, and Karen Keet, previously a familiar face with South Africa’s Blue Cube Systems. Although now with FLSmidth, Karen is still based in South Africa.

FLSmidth's Mick McCaslin, Dariusz Lelinski, Chris Speer, Karen Keet,
Anika Lindstrom, Steve Merrill and Marnus Fick

People often ask why flotation, which has been around for more than a century, is still so intensively researched. A major reason is that it is crucial to the economic production of many critical metals and minerals, and handles vast tonnages, so even modest increases in recoveries have a marked effect on overall production, which is why flotation has always been MEI's most important conference series. Flotation chemistry is all important in attaining selectivity at high recoveries, and there are a bewildering array of reagents manufactured by many international companies, of which Solvay, also a sponsor of Flotation ‘23, is one of the world’s biggest. There are around 20 in the team this week and I managed to talk to six of them and to hear about the proposed papers they will be submitting for Flotation ‘23.

Moving on I had a beer with my old friend Chris Martin, of RSG Inc, USA. Although the company he formed is based in Alabama, Chris is a fellow Brit, and an avid Manchester United fan. He will be exhibiting at Comminution ‘23 in April, and introducing a new line of vertical roller mills with power from 100 to 750 kW for use in dry grinding applications.

I then had a long chat with Rob McIvor and Omar Arafat of Metcom Technologies Inc, who continue to provide the industry with certified training in grinding circuit optimisation. Their Acerta media size test program is specifically developed to target the most effective ball charges in ball mills in terms of ball size and the latest version of Streamline provides plant metallurgists with a practical ball mill circuit modelling solution.

Rob is working on a biography of the life and works of the legendary Fred Bond and we discussed possible avenues for publication. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Omar and Rob

I had’t seen Steve Hearn for a number of years so it was good to catch up with him. He is working with Quinn Process Equipment Co, who design and manufacture small and commercial size solvent extraction mixer-settler units. It was also good to meet the company President, Richard Quinn, who was with Erik Spiller of the Colorado School of Mines.

Richard, Steve and Erik

All too soon the 2 hour session ended and I made my way back to the hotel, to rest my aching limbs after a day in which I walked over 9 miles, both in the convention centre and around the downtown area (see Sunday in Denver). 

Monday 27th February

While waiting for the exhibition to open this morning I had a chat with two metallurgists from the Doe Run Company, a 5 million tonne per year underground lead/zinc/copper mine in Missouri. Jayson Ripke, Chief Metallurgist, was accompanied by metallurgist Abdul Jalil Mohammed.

I then called in at the Metso Outotec booth to thank them for their sponsorship of MEI Conferences over the years, and was a little surprised that none of them were aware of their involvement!  Not too surprised, however, as MO is a huge international company and most of our dealings have been with their South African operations. They have a very large team with their booth and a few of them are photographed below.

Sam  Palaniandy of Nippon Eirich Co, Australia, will be presenting work at Comminution ‘23. International company Eirich Machines Inc offers a range of mills and supplementary units, including the Tower Mill, for the very fine grinding of soft to very hard materials. Sam (right) and Director of Sales Tony Rampino (left) were deep in conversation with Andrea Festa-Bianchet, Principal Metallurgist with Orway Mineral Consultants, Canada.

Tony, Andrea and Sam

Moving on I stopped by at the Eriez booth to say hello to three familiar faces from the Flotation Division, Mike Mankosa, Jaisen Kohmuench and Maoming Fan. The 2021 SME Annual Meeting was held virtually, due to the pandemic, and Mike was then awarded the Robert H. Richards Award, which recognises achievement in any form which unmistakably furthers the art of mineral beneficiation in any of its branches. The award went deservedly to Mike,  the Executive Vice President of Global Technologies, the inventor of Eriez's HydroFloat Cell for flotation at coarse particle sizes, and the StackCell, both of which will be featured at Flotation ‘23. Eriez is a sponsor, and Mike and Chief Operating Officer Jaisen both hope to be there.

With Mike, Jaisen and Maoming

I then caught up with Xuming Wang, of the University of Utah, with Srinivas Veeramasuneni, Chief Technology Officer with USG, Chicago. Both Xuming and Srinivas were former PhD students with Prof Jan Miller at Utah, and Xuming was involved with Prof Miller in the horrific car crash in Tibet 10 Years ago (posting of 13 July 2013), from which they are both now fully recovered.

The afternoon session was mineral processing’s highlight of the week, the Mineral Processing Division (MPD) awards and lectures, which was extremely well attended, and I was pleased to see chaired by one of my old students, Dave Meadows of Bechtel, who graduated from Camborne School of Mines in 1985.  Dave is the incoming Chair of the MPD Executive Committee for 2023.

In 1982 I spent six weeks at the University of Cape Town (UCT), advising on, and teaching, a new course in mineral processing in the Department of Chemical Engineering. In my class was a young lecturer in chemical engineering, Dr. Cyril O'Connor, who obviously had a keen interest in the flotation lectures. Cyril and I got on well, and we became great friends, and it has been good to see how his career has progressed at UCT from those far off days. He has been a long serving Chairman of the IMPC, and today I was more than pleased to congratulate him on receiving the MPD's Antoine Gaudin Award for outstanding scientific, technical, and outreach contributions that have advanced the engineering practice of mineral processing. His award lecture was a review of major developments in our understanding of the chemistry of flotation since the 1st IMPC in London in 1952.

It would also have been good to congratulate Steve Morrell, of  SMC Testing Pty Ltd, a well known figure at international conferences, including MEI's comminution events, but due to ill health he was unable to travel to Denver from Australia. Steve was awarded the Robert H. Richards Award for his long service and numerous contributions to the science and practice of comminution and mineral processing, and the award was accepted by his friend Rob Dunne on his behalf. Steve recorded his lecture, on a global and mining industry perspective of the role of comminution in the 1.5°C future. The commitment of many countries to achieve a so-called 1.5°C future to combat global warming has put the mining industry under intense pressure to reduce carbon emissions. This has led to most mining companies committing to significant reductions in their operational carbon footprint, in many cases by up to 30-40% in the next 10-15 years, and to place themselves in a net-zero emissions position by 2050. In many hard-rock mine sites, comminution constitutes over 50% of the total energy consumption, and there are claims in published papers and the popular press that comminution in the mining industry may consume upwards of 7% of global electricity use. Steve's virtual lecture explored what is the true contribution of comminution to greenhouse-gas emissions and the consequences of improving its energy efficiency.

The winner of the Milton E. Wadsworth Award, Yeonuk Choi, of YaKum Consulting Inc, Canada I had never met until today. His award was for his dedication and contributions to the development and implementation of technologies in the field of extractive metallurgy from the idea generation stage through commercialisation and he presented a lecture on alternatives to cyanide for gold extraction. Cyanide has been used for over 100 years for extracting gold and is still used in most gold operations. However, due to increasing social awareness and environmental concerns, the development and implementation of alternative hydrometallurgical processes to cyanide has been a focus of various research institutions and gold companies. 

Yeonuk, Rob, Cyril and Dave

Before calling it a day, I took a final look in the exhibit hall and talked to Marcos de Paiva Bueno, the CEO and Founder of Geopyörä, which 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. The 2021 CEEC Medal for Technical Research was awarded to the authors of the paper The Double Wheel Breakage Test, which was presented virtually at Comminution '21 by Marcos  and was published in Minerals Engineering, Volume 168, July 2021. Marcos has already signed up to exhibit at Comminution '23 and will be presenting updates on the development of the prototype breakage testing device, Geopyörä. 

Marcos (right) with his colleague Ronan Cruz

Tuesday 28th February

The last full day began with a pleasant surprise when I saw Frank Roberto, Director of Processing at Newmont Corporation, who is involved with the commercial-scale application of microbial sulfide mineral oxidation to base and precious metals extraction.  Frank has been a regular contributor to MEI’s biomining conferences, and presented a keynote lecture at Biohydromet ‘16 in Falmouth. Due to budget cuts he will not be able to attend Biomining ‘23 and says that he will miss Falmouth, the Cornish ale at the Chain Locker, and the range of single malt whiskies at the nearby Quayside pub! Hopefully he will be back for Biomining ‘25.

Passing the SME bookstore I caught up with Peter Darling, a freelance technical writer, who I taught at  Camborne School of Mines many years ago. He graduated from CSM with an HND in 1978 and then went on to the Royal School of Mines,  graduating with a degree in mining engineering in 1978. His two recent SME books on surface mining and underground mining, were both on display in the bookstore, as was the 8th edition of my book, giving us the opportunity to show off a little for a photograph.

It was good to see Courtney Young, a professor at Montana Tech, in the Chevron Phillips booth. It gave me the opportunity of congratulating him on his recent nomination to the SME board of directors, beginning in 2024. He received the Antoine Gaudin Award in the virtual SME Annual Meeting in 2021. Courtney is involved with Chevron Phillips in research on their Orfom range of solvent extraction and flotation reagents and presented work on Orfom D8 as a chalcopyrite depressant in the flotation of Cu-Mo bulk concentrates at Flotation '19.  

CP’s Sales Manager David Miller, and senior research scientist Chad Brown I first met at the SAIMM’s Copper-Cobalt conference in Zambia in 2015 and it was good to see them again, as well as colleagues Debbie Laney and Shawn Childress.

David, Shawn, Chad, Courtney and Debbie

Clariant, one of the world’s leading specialty chemical companies, provides a wide range of flotation collectors for specific duties such as the flotation of industrial minerals, iron ore, and molybdenite. I called by their booth to thank them for their sponsorship of Flotation ‘23 and to hear more of their NaSH replacement sulfide depressants for copper-moly separation.

I stopped off at the SNC-Lavalin booth to talk to Trevor Sparks, the only UK representative on the team. Trevor attended the Cornish Mining Sundowner with his daughter in Falmouth last July. 

Trevor (left) with colleagues

SNC-Lavalin Group is a Canadian company that provides engineering procurement and construction services to various industries, including mining and metallurgy, environmental and water and clean energy. I’m hoping that Trevor will be back in Cornwall for Sustainable Minerals ‘23 in June, to talk about SNC-Lavalin’s important contribution to sustainability.

It is always nice to talk to the affable bunch from ME Elecmetal, sponsors of Comminution ‘23, where they will be highlighting their innovative liner and alloy designs for optimal performance of grinding mills. Global engineering director Amit Saxena (4th left below) will be presenting a paper on quantifying SAG mill liner survivability and wear life.

The Denver altitude is quite tiring, so a short rest was needed before setting off to the Hyatt Regency Hotel for the International Reception, very well attended by some of the 13% of delegates from outside the USA. A good opportunity to relax with people from all parts of the world and savour the one complimentary drink.

Unfortunately Paul Moore, of MEI Conferences media partner International Mining was unable to attend, but fellow editors Daniel Gleeson and Phil Playle were joined by Mike O’Driscoll, of IMFORMED, providers of industrial mineral conferences, and Albert Li of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Current International Mining themes are ore sorting and the ongoing technological evolution of gearless and geared mill drives, balancing throughput with energy efficiency.

With Daniel, Albert, Mike and Phil, from UK

With Barry Lumsden (Ausmetec, Australia), Karen Keet (FLSmidth, South Africa)
and Reinaldo Novaes (FLSmidth, Brazil)

Pablo Brito-Parada (Imperial College, UK), Romke Kuyvenhoven (Metcelerate, Chile),
Chris Bennett (Woodgrove Technologies, Canada) and Richard Dixon (Metso Outotec, Spain)

Wednesday 1st March

LinkedIn is a wonderful social networking site; yesterday I was messaged by Hassan Fayed, President and sole employee of a new company Narmer-Engsim, USA, focused on developing fast flotation systems using aerated hydrocyclones. Hassan is using CFD techniques in collaboration with Kris Strickland, a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech, and it is highly likely that they will be involved with Flotation ‘23 in November to promote their innovative technology.

With Hassan and Kris

In the 19th century hand sorting of run-of-mine ore on conveyor belts was a major method of concentration, but as grades declined this became obsolete, but electronic sorting is now one of the most important pre-concentration methods. I had an interesting talk with fellow Mancunian Neil Munro, Business Development Manager, and April Montera, Sales Director, of Sabia, a Californian company who build cross belt analysers, designed to be installed directly onto the conveyor. The Prompt Gamma Neutron Activation Analysers provide real-time analyses of a moving stream of raw material and have been used extensively in the cement industry for limestone stockpile building and blending and raw mix control. They have also had applications in mineral ore beneficiation and other processing for nickel, phosphate, gold, iron, tin and other minerals.

All too soon the final half day of Denver 2023 ended and I made my final farewells to old and new friends, before calling in at the bookshop to say farewell to Theo Warrior, David Oxford, of SME Customer Services, and Melissa Serdinsky, the new book publishing manager, who has replaced recently retired Jane Oliver, who has been my contact for many years.

Overall a great few days at the meeting in Denver, this year attended by 6466 delegates from 30 countries, of which  553 were students. I look forward to next year’s meeting, February 25-28 in Phoenix, and for your views on the 2023 event if you were there.

#MINEXCHANGE2023
@barrywills