Prof. Graeme Jameson's lifetime of flotation research will be highlighted at Flotation '23

Prof Graeme Jameson, Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia, is probably our profession's most prolific and respected innovator in froth flotation. In 2018 he was honoured by one of the most prestigious organisations in the world, the Royal Society, which boasts a fellowship of 1,600 of the world’s most eminent scientists. Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS, a rare and distinguished honour, is decided by a peer-review process based on excellence in science, and this was bestowed on Prof. Jameson for his work on fluid and particle mechanics, and especially the flotation process. Graeme joined scientists of the calibre of the late Stephen Hawking, and a galaxy of renowned scientists such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Tim Burners-Lee, the inventor of the internet.

Graeme has many awards, including the IMPC Lifetime Achievement Award and over the years he has become a great friend to the MEI family, having contributed in major ways to all but one of our flotation conferences. It's not every day that you can boast of having pizzas in a shopping mall with the family and a FRS, as we did with Graeme in Cape Town in 2019!

Graeme is 87 years old this year, and has announced that this will be his retirement year, although I have serious doubts about this. He will be back at the Vineyard Hotel, Cape Town, in November for Flotation '23 and will be opening the conference with a keynote lecture “Mostly froth and bubble – a lifetime of flotation research”.

Prof. Jameson has recognised for many years the need to improve the performance of flotation cells as head grades have declined, and ores have become more complex. Since its inception for base metal recovery at Broken Hill in 1905, mechanical flotation machines have been developed that are very efficient for a particular range of particle sizes. For base metals, this range is typically between about 75 to 125 µm. Recoveries of fine and ultrafine particles below 75 µm decline with decreasing particle size. Such particles can be recovered by mechanical cells with a rotor and stator, by using long residence times. At the other end of the size spectrum, recoveries start to decline with increasing particle size, and there is a limit beyond which they are essentially zero, even with fully liberated minerals. 

Graeme Jameson first saw a flotation cell when he took his first job in the assay laboratory of a tin smelter in Sydney, Australia at age sixteen. It had been used to recover bismuth and other trace metals for use in bearing metals for the war effort. While studying part-time for a degree in chemical engineering, he became interested in the dynamics of bubbles and particles, an interest he continued when he went to study for a PhD with Dr John Davidson at Cambridge in the UK. On graduation, he went to the oil industry in the US for two years after which he joined Imperial College London. Here, he met Dr Joe Kitchener, a well-known flotation surface chemist in the Royal School of Mines. 

Knowing of his interest in bubbles and particles, in 1969 Dr Kitchener encouraged Graeme to focus his research on physical aspects of flotation, seeking first to discover why fine particles were so slow to float, and then to develop new machines that would overcome the barriers. 

Prof. Jaemson's presentation at Flotation '23 will describe the research and outcomes that have led to the introduction of three new flotation machines: the Jameson Cell, licensed to Mt Isa Mines Ltd, then Xstrata Technology and now Glencore Technology, Brisbane; the Concorde Cell for ultrafines and rheologically-challenging ores, licensed to Metso, Helsinki; and the NovaCell for coarse particles, licensed to Jord International, Sydney. The keynote will be followed by presentations on innovative developments in flotation machines, including Graeme's inventions.

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Jameson Cell at Flotation '19

#Flotation23 

Sustainable Minerals '23: a summary of the technical presentations

Sustainable Minerals '23, MEI's 8th International Symposium on Sustainable Minerals, was held at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth, UK, from June 7-8, 2023 and was sponsored by Promet101 and Steinert. Media Partners were International Mining and Minerals Engineering, and Industry Advocates the Coalition for Eco-Efficient Comminution (CEEC) and the Critical Minerals Association. 

Following is a summary of the presentations made in the technical sessions over the two days.  The draft papers associated with the presentations are available online as open access. The drafts have not been refereed, but all the presenters have been invited to submit their final papers for peer-review to a virtual special issue of Minerals Engineering.

Wednesday June 7th

The conference was opened this morning by MEI's Jon Wills, who welcomed the 53 delegates from 14 countries before a full day of technical presentations.

Lithium is one of the key critical metals in the green energy transition, and here in Cornwall Cornish Lithium is progressing towards extraction from two previously considered ‘unconventional’ sources of lithium: from geothermal waters, and from mica minerals disseminated through granite rock, as described by Lucy Crane in the first keynote lecture of the conference. Lucy is the ESG & Sustainability Manager for Cornish Lithium and is a geologist by training with a background in grassroots exploration. She has been on the committee for Young Mining Professionals London since its inception, and is heavily involved in Women in Mining UK. She holds a degree in Earth Sciences from Oxford University, and a Masters in Mining Geology from the Camborne School of Mines.

Lucy (left) at the opening session with Carly Leonidas (UK)

The potential for brines in geothermal waters was also the subject of the next presentation, by Ivan Korolev, a Research Scientist at Geological Survey of Finland,  who graduated from Erasmus Mundus Master Course in Georesources Engineering EMerald in 2016 with a triple degree from University of Liège, Belgium, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden and École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie de Nancy, France. From 2017 he has pursued doctoral studies at Aalto University, Finland.

With Ivan Korolev

As discussed by Ivan, highly mineralized waters are considered a promising, though under exploited, source of metals. Occurring at great depths, brines may contain economic concentrations of critical elements, especially Li, while their high temperature may be used to generate low-carbon electricity and heating, as is Cornish Lithium's intention. The BrineRIS project, described by Ivan, is  co-funded by EIT Raw Materials and aims to decrease the dependency of Europe on imported critical metals and improve the accessibility of renewable geothermal energy. 

Originally from Recife in Brazil, Bernardo Mendonça is a PhD student at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. He has a mixed background in civil engineering and urban development. Bernardo discussed his research, which is seeking to understand the role of voluntary sustainability initiatives that may be adopted within lithium-ion battery material supply chains and the various factors that may influence their adoption.

Jenna Trost is a doctoral student in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University, USA. She focuses on the analysis of environmental and social sustainability of mining of minerals for decarbonization technologies through life cycle analysis. In her presentation she assessed the feasibility of the Inflation Reduction Act’s EV critical mineral targets.

Jenna (centre) with Rachel Bridge (Canada) and Kari Heiskanen (Finland)

Lithium was featured again after the coffee break. Peter Ehren, a lithium expert with 26 years of experience in the industry, is co-founder of Lithium Ark Holding and Process and Environmental Consultancy in The Netherlands. He showed that, although lithium is widely distributed on Earth, there are few commercial sources where lithium is found in concentrated values suitable for producing lithium compounds, such as lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide. One source of lithium is in minerals, such as, spodumene and clays. Another source is from naturally occurring brines and a new source is the black mass obtained from wasted lithium-ion battery recycling streams. 

Once the lithium is extracted and concentrated, conventional methods react a resulting lithium solution with one or more reagents to produce lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate. However, these reagents, can be expensive to obtain and may contain noxious impurities. In addition, existing lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate production processes can be inefficient, requiring improvement in waste reduction and material re-use. Accordingly, more cost-effective and efficient methods and systems for producing lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate are needed and Peter described a new patented method for production of lithium hydroxide. 

Peter Ehren (right) at the afternoon sundowner at the Chain Locker

Lütke von Ketelhodt, of conference sponsor Steinert, South Africa, has over 20 years’ experience in introducing sensor-based sorting technology into the mining sector for mineral beneficiation applications. He looked at the applicability of sensor based sorting technology for the processing of lithium pegmatite ores. The work offers a framework on which to evaluate the sortability of lithium pegmatite ores with a focus on achieving ESG goals. Using a multi-sensor platform approach provides flexible solutions to decrease the carbon footprint of existing processing routes. 

Luke with his colleague Priscila Esteves, of Steinert Latinoamericana, Brazil

Justin Paris completed his B.Eng. in Materials Engineering at McGill University, Canada, in 2022. He is now a first year Ph.D. student in the same department. His research aims to increase the availability of lithium resources by developing new mineral processing and hydrometallurgical methods for the beneficiation and extraction of lithium from hard-rock deposits. He presented a preliminary investigation into lithium extraction by phosphoric acid leaching of spodumene.

Justin (2nd right) with his 5 colleagues from McGill University

Anahita Jannesar Niri is a PhD student at the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. She received her Master’s degree in Mining Engineering from the Islamic Azad University, Iran, in 2015, and a Bachelor degree in Mining Engineering from the University of Zanjan, Iran, in 2012. Anahita evaluated the sustainability of battery minerals supply through production prediction in a move towards the green energy transition.

Anahita with Luleå colleagues Yousef Ghorbani and Sina Shakibania

Meolla Yvon is a PhD student at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Enabling Eco-Efficient Beneficiation of Minerals. Her research is mainly focused on the agglomeration of fine mineral particles using a novel emulsion binder with an aim of maximising ore recovery with minimal environmental damage. She discussed this after the lunch break in relation to nickel beneficiation.

Meolla (left) at the evening sundowner at the Chain Locker

Tiina Heikola (left) is a Research Scientist in the Metals and Materials Recovery group at VTT, Finland. She graduated from the University of Jyväskylä in inorganic and analytical chemistry and her presentation was a comparison of chemical and biological methods, with the effect of chloride, on the recovery of nickel and cobalt from nickel concentrate.

Peipei Wang is a Research Associate in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Enabling Eco-Efficient Beneficiation of Minerals, based at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She obtained her PhD at Imperial College, UK and her research focused on the rising behaviour of particle-laden bubbles. This work was recognised via the Bosworth Smith Trust Fund Prize from the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. She then spent her postdoc at the University of Queensland investigating ways to enhance flotation recovery, and undertook studies concerned with bubble bursting at flotation froth surfaces. Her current work at the University of Newcastle, which she described today, is on the development of the Reflux Flotation Cell and a novel agglomeration technology.

Peipei with Isobel Mackay of University College, UK

Martin Rudolph is head of the processing department at the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology, Germany.  Coming from nanoparticle systems processing as a postdoc he transitioned to mineral processing research with a focus on fine particle separation methods such as heterocoagulation in froth flotation. His presentation looked at fine particle separation methods for the recycling of critical metals and minerals in energy transition technologies, with emphasis on the cases of black mass from end of life lithium-ion batteries and critical metals bearing catalysts from spent proton-exchange membrane electrolyzers.

Martin with Margaret Ekua Amosah and Nilanka Ekanayake (Australia)

Tommi Rinne is a doctoral student in the Processing of Materials program in Aalto University, Finland. His research explores innovative mechanical processes for recycling Li-ion batteries and his presentation was a study on the effect of particle size on the recycling of Li-ion batteries via froth flotation and perspectives on selective flocculation.

Tommi Rinne (right) at the Chain Locker sundowner

Jens Markowski, a scientific assistant at the Brandenburg University Of Technology, Germany, described comparative studies on the quality of recovered secondary graphites from the recycling of lithium-ion traction batteries.

Jens with Stoyan Gaydardzhiev (Belgium)

Aaron Taylor, of Wardell Armstrong International, UK, holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Cardiff University and has 5 years of experience in managing laboratory and pilot-scale testwork operations.  He showed that, as lithium production must quadruple, and rare-earth metal demand is set to double by 2030, recycled production offers a pathway to offset increased demand. Battery and e-waste recycling of critical metals is in its infancy, but he reviewed integrating this type of metal processing back into the mining life cycle.

Aaron with Malcolm Spence of British Lithium

Christina Lee works within the Chalmers Rock Processing Systems research group of Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Coming from a Masters in Environmental Science at Gothenburg University, she brings an interdisciplinary element to the group with a key interest in the environmental impacts related to the aggregate industry. She presented the final paper of the day looking at secondary materials in the European aggregate market and what is feasible now?

And Christina was looking very relaxed a couple of hours later at the evening sundowner at the Chain Locker, following the 3 mile guided coast path walk (see Wednesday at Sustainable Minerals '23).

Thursday June 8th

The second day was opened by a keynote lecture from Jannie Van Deventer, who was ranked #2 in the world in mining and metallurgy research (posting of 17 December 2020). With three doctorates in chemical engineering, mineral processing and business economics, Jannie has received several awards for his research and has been listed three times as one of Australia's most influential engineers. Prof. Van Deventer is CEO of Zeobond Pty Ltd and is an honorary professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, where he was Dean of Engineering until 2007. He has a track record of commercialising technology in cement and mineral processing, and by analysing the interplay between technical and commercial factors, especially regarding concrete durability, a pathway that was proposed, in his keynote lecture, for the adoption of new technology to decarbonise cement and concrete. Portland cement production is the world’s largest emitter of CO2 at 8% of global emissions, equal to the global car fleet. 

With Jannie Van Deventer

Following the keynote lecture, Gauti Asbjörnsson (left) an Associate Professor at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, described the development of production and environmental platforms for the European aggregates and minerals industries. Gauti is currently involved in two EU projects, Horizon 2020 Digiecoquarry and Horizon Europe Rotate where he is responsible for the environmental estimations for the different platforms.

Abdellatif Elghali is an assistant professor at the Geology & Sustainable Mining institute at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco. He discussed the geochemical implication of cemented layers formation in inactive sulfidic tailings storage facilities.

Abdellatif with his colleague Yassine Taha

Margaret Ekua Amosah is a PhD student at the University of Newcastle, Australia and part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Enabling Eco-Efficient Beneficiation of Minerals. She graduated with a Bachelor of Minerals Engineering (Honours) from the University of Mines and Technology, Ghana, in 2020 and has a working experience with a gold mine as a trainee metallurgist. Her research is mainly focused on ultrafine gravity separation using inclined channels subjected to different G-forces including standard gravity and she discussed the role of enhanced desliming and gravity separation in upgrading cassiterite from tailings.

Nilanka Ekanayake is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow from ARC Centre of Excellence for Enabling Eco-Efficient Beneficiation of Minerals, the Department of Chemical & Engineering at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on the development and application of analytical and CFD models to solve solid-liquid separation in dewatering units used in the mineral industry. She discussed the modelling of High Pressure Dewatering Rolls as an alternative filtration technology for tailings.

Margaret (2nd left) and Nilanka (3rd left) at the Chain Locker sundowner

Diana Kasymova (left) is preparing her doctoral thesis at Aalto University and she is with Metso, Finland. She has a long experience on water research in an industrial environment. She is especially interested in the formation and effects of polythionates in industrial sulphide flotation circuits. Diana discussed the challenges of closing water loops at mineral processing sites. She proposed a paradigm shift of how to move towards a more resilient mineral resource conversion by modelling and controlling mineral-water interactive systems.

Yassine Taha, of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco, then discussed performance evaluation and benchmarking for the life cycle assessment of phosphate mining and beneficiation.

Sofi Buzukashvili (left) is a PhD Student at McGill University, Canada. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Sofi got her Master's degree with honors from the National University of Science and Technology in Moscow, after which she emigrated again, this time to Israel, where she worked at the Weizmann Institute of Science. In early 2020, Sofi started her PhD program at McGill, supervised by Kristian Waters. Her research, the subject of her presentation, focuses on remediating wastewater from heavy metals using synthetic zeolites derived from coal fly ash.

Laura Castro (right) has a PhD in Materials Chemistry and she is Assistant Professor at Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. She has developed her research in the field of biohydrometallurgy and presented work on the selective biosorption and recovery of scandium using the alga Fucus vesiculosus.

Msimelelo Gcayiya is at the Centre For Bioprocess Engineering Research at the University of Cape Town, and he looked at the production of iron-based products from South African coal waste using biohydrometallurgical processing techniques.

Msimelelo (centre) with UCT colleagues Sue Harrison and Ishaaq Hajee

Helene Baust is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Mechanical Process Engineering and Mechanics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. She received her Bachelor of Science at KIT in 2015 and her Master in Chemical and Process Engineering at the same University in 2018. Her research, and her presentation, is focused on simulation and modeling of separation processes, in particular of centrifuges.

The final session began with a presentation from Christopher Olsen, of FLSmidth, USA. Christopher has over 20 years experience with conveyors, mobile conveying, and stacking systems. He presented guidelines for transporting and stacking dewatered tailings. Dry stacking offers several advantages over traditional tailings storage methods. One of the primary benefits is the significant reduction in water usage and the associated costs of managing large volumes of water in tailings ponds. Dry stacking also eliminates the risk of dam failures or leaks from tailings ponds, which can have severe environmental and safety consequences

Helene Baust (left) and Christopher Olsen with Nilanka Ekanayake (Australia)

Mohamed Aaatach is a PhD student at the GeMMe 'Mineral Processing and Recycling' Unit of the University of Liege, Belgium. His PhD project is "A Fundamental Study on the Application of Ultrasound in the Hydrometallurgy for the Recycling of Copper from End-of-life Products" and he spoke of the effects of ultrasound on the electrochemical cementation of copper onto iron.

Mohamed (2nd right) with Laura Castro (Spain), Axel Schippers (Germany) and Stoyan Gaydarzhiev

Sina Shakibania (left) is a PhD candidate at the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, working on the sustainable process development for the extraction of the valuable metals from mineral wastes. He received his MSc degree in Materials Science-Metals Extraction from the University of Tehran, Iran, in 2018 and a BSc degree in Materials Science-Extractive Metallurgy from the Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran, in 2014. His research field is hydrometallurgy focusing on the purification of the leaching solution using a variety of processes, such as solvent extraction and precipitation. His presentation covered the purification of K-feldspar leaching solution using anti-solvent crystallization.

Our only delegate from China is Xianjun Lyu, who obtained his PhD in Mineral Processing from the Northeastern University, China, in 1994. He was a visiting scholar at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, from 2000 to 2001. He is currently a professor in mineral processing at Shandong University of Science and Technology and his presentation was on the application of soda sludge in the preparation of cement clinker.

Xianjun with Ozan Kokkilic (Canada) and Amanda Wills

Mohamadreza Arefzadeh is a PhD Researcher at the Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. He presented a study of oxalic acid recovery using solvent extraction with TBP, Cyanex923, and Aliquat336 as organic solvents from a synthesised hydrochloric acid solution.

Mohamadreza (right) with Tommi Rinne (Finland) and Sina Shakibania (Sweden)

Born in South Korea, Heekang Kim (left) moved with his family to Montreal, Canada in 2009. After completing a BEng in materials engineering at McGill University in 2020, he joined the University’s mineral processing group as a master’s student in 2021, supervised by Kristian Waters. He explored the connection between elemental sulphur and sulphide minerals.

Mbuyu Ntunka is an experienced academic at the Durban University of Technology and an honorary researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. His doctoral work was focused on the recovery of electrolytic grade manganese dioxide, using an integrated circuit, comprising grinding, leaching, purification and electrolysis and his presentation focused on the sustainable production of electrolytic manganese dioxide.

Mbuyu by Pendennis Castle on the coastal path walk

MEI's Amanda Wills then closed the conference, inviting everyone to Critical Metals '24, which will be held in November next year in Cape Town, before adjournment for farewells with a Cornish Cream Tea.

We would greatly appreciate your views on the conference via comments to this posting.  

All the photos on the blog postings, and more, are in a Sustainable Minerals '23 Album. Please feel free to download photos for your personal use. If you would like to use any photos on a company website, please acknowledge the source (MEI Blog).

#SustainableMinerals23
@barrywills

Biomining '23: a summary of the technical presentations

Biomining '23, MEI's 11th International Symposium on Biomining was held at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth, UK, from June 5-6, 2023. It was organised in consultation with Prof. Sue Harrison, of the University of Cape Town, South Africa and Dr. Chris Bryan, of BRGM, France, with media Partners International Mining and Minerals Engineering and Industry Advocates the Critical Minerals Association.

Following is a summary of the presentations made in the technical sessions over the two days.  The draft papers associated with the presentations are available online as open access. The drafts have not been refereed, but all the presenters have been invited to submit their final papers for peer-review to a virtual special issue of Minerals Engineering.

Monday June 5th

The conference was opened this morning by MEI's Jon Wills, who welcomed the 55 delegates from 14 countries, and then the proceedings got off to a fine start with a keynote from Axel Schippers, who is highly respected in the field of biohydrometallurgy. He has been with the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (FIGNR) in Germany since 2007 and now heads the Geomicrobiology unit. In 2006 he qualified as lecturer in microbiology and geochemistry at the Leibniz University of Hannover and was appointed as Professor in 2011. His keynote lecture showed how biohydrometallurgy offers various process options including bioleaching, biooxidation, biomineralization, bioprecipitation, biosorption and bioelectrochemistry for metal recovery from primary and secondary resources.

Axel was a co-author of the next presentation, by his FIGNR colleague Stefanie Hetz, an environmental microbiologist with focus on nitrogen, sulfur and iron cycles. She did research at the Universities of Bayreuth and Hannover before moving to FIGNR in 2021 and her presentation explored options for stirred-tank reactor and column bioleaching of nickel and cobalt from Brazilian laterite ores.

Stefanie Hetz and Axel Schippers

Ana Santos has presented work at previous MEI biomining conferences as a PhD student at Bangor University, UK, from where she graduated in 2018 before working as a post-doctoral researcher until 2021. She joined London's Natural History Museum in February 2022 as a Research Fellow in Geomicrobiology and she has been working on the development of novel and improved biotechnologies to extract base and rare-earth metals from mine wastes and from new, untapped resources such as marine polymetallic nodules, the subject of her presentation.

Ana Santos (right) with Paula Morais of University of Coimbra, Portugal

Paul Norris, of the University of Exeter, UK is currently biohydrometallurgy consultant for GSL in Cornwall, following fifty years of research at the Universities of London and Warwick, with over 80 publications concerning microbiology of extreme environments, acidophilic microorganisms and biohydrometallurgy. This morning he discussed the continuous bioreactor processing of a nickel sulfide concentrate with moderately thermophilic bacteria and archaea.

Paul Norris (left) with Dave Dew (UK), Anders Sand (Sweden)
and Anne-Gwenaelle Guezennec (France)

Ivan Nancucheo (left) of the Universidad San Sebastián, Spain, has a PhD degree in microbiology from Bangor University, where he was a post-doc in a bioreductive dissolution of laterites project led by Professor Barrie Johnson. He worked in Brazil at Vale Mining Company for three years and during this period he was a visiting scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He presented work on the recovery of “pure” CuS nanoparticles using biogenic H2S from a complex bioleach liquor.

Alfonso Mazuelos is a Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at the University of Seville, Spain and he discussed continuous ferrous iron biooxidation in a packed-bed bioreactor at very extreme acidity conditions.

Blanca Perdigones is a PhD student at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Seville. She holds a degree in Biochemistry from the Universities of Seville and Malaga, a Master's degree in Water Quality Sciences and Techniques from the University of Granada and a Master's degree in Advanced Studies in Chemistry from the University of Seville. Blanca has collaborated in research in international environments such as in Chile and Argentina. She is currently a grant holder in the European RAWMINA project within the framework of the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, where she is developing her thesis on the starting-up of bioleaching bioreactors. She presented work on adaptation of an iron oxidizing culture to extremely high Fe concentration by a programmed fed batch bioreactor.

Blanca and Alfonso

The presentation from Laura Castro (left), an Assistant Professor at Complutense University of Madrid, Spain took us up to the lunch break. She discussed the isolation of a halotolerant and iron oxidizing bacterium from Rio Tinto, Spain, with potential for seawater bioleaching.

Paul Norris, in his second presentation of the day, discussed the carbon dioxide requirements and fixation by various mineral-sulfide oxidizing bacteria.

Didi Makaula is a scientist in the Biometallurgy Division at Mintek, South Africa. He also works in partnership with commercial organisations to improve the growth of bioleaching cultures at different temperature profiles and he presented work aimed at bridging the temperature gap from thermotolerant mesophilic to moderate thermophilic conditions. The insights gained from these studies will assist with the selection, adaptation and maintenance of the best performing cultures in these higher temperature profiles.  

Didi Makaula (right) with Dave Dew (UK) and Nokubonga Zulu (South Africa)

Megan Barnett (left) has been at the British Geological Survey since 2015. Her biomining research had focused on REE, but she also has interests in the sustainable extraction of other critical metals. Megan discussed changing REE leaching profiles by bioleaching with methylotrophs.

Fernando Vera is a PhD student at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, Chile and he explained how copper smelters currently deal with arsenic contamination in processed ores. Chemical processes for removing arsenics are expensive and ineffective, and he evaluated the biological treatment of arsenic in effluents from a copper smelter gas washing plant using a consortium of iron-oxidizing mesophiles (35 °C) adapted to As(III). 

Fernando (left) during one of the morning breaks

Ishaaq Hajee holds an MSc in chemistry, having majored in chemistry and biochemistry at the undergraduate level. He then entered the mining industry and has worked at refineries, froth flotation plants, and various chrome mines across Africa. He is now a PhD student at the University of Cape Town, and presented his work which involves using naturally occurring bacterial phenomena to help prevent acid rock drainage, a process which threatens to pollute the already scarce water resources in South Africa.

Ishaaq (right) with UCT colleagues Sue Harrison and Msimelelo Gcayiya

After completing her BSc and MSc studies in Life Science & Technology at the Technical University of Delft, Charlotte (Lot) van der Graaf went to Wageningen University & Research, both in the Netherlands, for her PhD research. There she focused on microbial and chemical sulfide production at acidic conditions, with the aim of improving process economics of the treatment of metalliferous waste streams (acid mine drainage, metallurgy waters) through metal sulfide precipitation. Lot is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cadiz, Spain, where she studies metallic copper formation in acid mine drainage biofilms found in the Rio Tinto area (Huelva, Spain), the subject of her presentation.

Lot van der Graaf with Stefanie Hetz (Germany)

Bailee Johnson completed her B. Eng in Materials Engineering at McGill University, Canada. Throughout her Bachelors degree, she worked in Prof. Kristian Waters' mineral processing laboratory as an undergraduate research assistant; as a result of her work, she has contributing authorship on two published academic papers as well as a first-place-winning technical report presented at Canadian Mineral Processors 2018. On graduation, Bailee worked for CiDRA Minerals Processing and supported the development and scale-up of a novel mineral processing technique. Her work took her to concentration plants across North and South America; she served as onsite project lead for two of these projects. Now completing her MSc at McGill University, she is a CMP 2021 Scholarship recipient and McGill Graduate Excellence Fellow for 2021 and her paper, the last of the day, was an investigation of froth flotation of municipal wastewater treatment plant biosolids for phosphorus separation.

Bailee with McGill colleague Ozan Kokkilic 

After a long day it was good to get out into the warm Cornish sunshine for the 3 mile guided coastal path walk, followed by drinks at the Chain Locker pub (see Monday at Biomining '23).

Tuesday June 6th

Karen Hudson-Edwards got the day underway with a keynote lecture reviewing the biomining of copper and other technology metals. Karen is Professor in Sustainable Mining at the Camborne School of Mines and Environment and Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter, UK. She was the 2012/3 Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland’s Hallimond Lecturer, the 2016 Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy New Zealand's Visiting Lecturer and the 2019 European Association of Geochemistry’s Distinguished Lecturer.

Karen (right) with Sue Harrison and Carmen Falagan at Monday's sundowner at the Chain Locker

Klemens Kremser is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Natural Resources and Life Science Vienna and the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology. He discussed Project FuLIBatteR, future lithium-ion battery recycling for the recovery of critical raw materials.

Klemens with Daniel Kupka (Slovakia)

Lidia Garcia Saez (left) is a PhD Researcher at the Universitat Politècnica De Catalunya, Spain, working on the recovery of valuable metals from lithium-ion batteries. Her presentation was on a multi-step bio-based process for recovering valuable metals from spent lithium-ion batteries without extreme pH and temperature.

After graduating in metallurgy in Iran, Mohammad Khoshkhoo worked for a few years there in the mining sector before moving to Luleå, Sweden in 2007, where he completed his master and doctorate studies in process metallurgy. He is now a Senior Development Engineer at Boliden Mineral, Sweden, and he presented results of a pilot campaign for the recovery of battery metals from low-grade mining residues via stirred tank bioleaching.

Mohammad with Blanca Perdigones (Spain)

Jens Markowski is a scientific assistant at the Brandenburg University of Technology, Germany and he described his experiences in the commissioning of a bioleaching plant for the recovery of gold from printed circuit boards.

Jens with Stoyan Gaydardzhiev (Belgium)

Anna Sieber holds a master's degree of Biotechnology from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna, Austria. After working for 2 years in industrial research, she started her PhD at K1-MET in cooperation with BOKU. Her research focuses on the recovery of metals from various waste stream and her presentation looked at the application of spent brewer’s yeast as a selective biosorbent for metal recovery from polymetallic waste streams.

Rebeka Frueholz is also representing K1-MET in Austria and is currently pursuing a PhD in the field of bioleaching using thermophilic bacteria. She discussed zinc removal from metallurgical dusts with sulfur-oxidizing bacteria.

Rebecca and Anna with their K1-Met colleague Lalropula Lalropula (right) and Stuart Wagland (UK)

Eva Pakostova graduated with a PhD in Biochemistry at the Masaryk University, Czech Republic, in 2016. She then worked as a post-doc at Bangor University, developing a new mining concept for extracting metals from deep ore deposits, using biotechnology. During another post-doc at the University of Waterloo, Canada she contributed with her microbiological expertise to the development of improved strategies for managing mine-waste environments and implementation of the innovative remediation technologies at an industrial scale. Eva joined Coventry University, UK, as Assistant Professor in 2020. She develops novel and improved biotechnologies to extract base and precious metals from primary ores and secondary (mine and electronic wastes) sources. In her presentation, co-authored with Neil Rowson of Bunting-Redditch, UK, she discussed the bioleaching of metals from automotive catalysts, focusing on magnetic separation and base metal removal using acidophilic bacteria.

Eva (right) with Daniel Kupka, Lenka Hagarova and Zuzana Bartova of Slovakia

Antonio David Dorado is a researcher at the Universitat Politècnica De Catalunya, Spain. He has a UPC Doctorate Extraordinary Award in Natural Resources and Environment and has spent time abroad, with postdoctoral studies at the University of Nueva Gales del Sur, Sydney, Australia and the PUC of Valparaíso, Chile. He described a high productivity bioprocess for obtaining metallic copper from printed circuit boards.

Antonio David relaxing at the Chain Locker sundowner

MEI conference consultant Sue Harrison, Director at the Centre For Bioprocess Enineering Research, University of Cape Town, South Africa, needs little introduction. She discussed the bioleaching of printed circuit boards in a continuous two-stage system including a re-circulating packed-bed reactor for improved regeneration of ferric ion.

Lalropuia Lalropuia currently works as a PhD Researcher at K1-MET, Austria and his research focuses on bioleaching of critical metals from spent lithium-ion batteries, the subject of his presentation. Lalropuia has a bachelor's degree in Mining Engineering from Bhagwant University, India and a master's degree in Advanced Mineral Resource Development from TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany and Montan University Leoben, Austria.

Carmen Falagan has been working in biomining for the past years in the European project NEMO at the University of Exeter before moving to the University of Portsmouth as a lecturer in Environmental Microbiology. She is interested in bioremediation and in developing new bioleaching approaches for mine tailings to minimise the impact of mining in the environment. Her presentation evaluated a pilot scale study for base metals recovery from low grade sulfidic residue ore.

Stoyan Gaydardzhiev also needs little introduction, as he is a familiar face at MEI Conferences. He is Professor and Head of the Mineral Processing and Recycling Unit at the University of Liege, Belgium, involved in various EU, national and regional research projects in the area of the circular economy and recycling and valorisation of metals. Taking us to the lunch break, he discussed the bioleaching of black mass from spent LiBs.

The final session began with a presentation from Douglas Pino Herrera, a process engineer/researcher at BRGM, France. He has a PhD in Environmental Technology from the University Gustave Eiffel in Paris, and he discussed bioleaching process development and optimization to recover critical raw materials from sulfidic mining wastes.

Douglas (3rd left) at the Chain Locker sundowner

Paula Morais. of the University of Coimbra, Portugal, works in environmental microbiology and she is the curator of the UCCCB Bacterial Culture Collection which constitutes an infrastructure of the University of Coimbra. Her presentation looked at biopolymer stabilization of bioleached mine residue to produce technosol.

Another speaker who needs little introduction is Barrie Johnson, Professor Emeritus at Bangor and Coventry Universities and a Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum, London. He compared two bioleaching protocols for extracting and recovering nickel from pyrrhotite waste.

Barrie Johnson (left) at the welcoming reception

Zuzana Bártová is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Geotechnics at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia. She studied biology as her major at the University of Pavol Jozef Šafárik in Košice, Slovakia. Her main focus is on bioleaching processes using microorganisms, bacterial growth kinetics and raw materials acquisition from acid mine drainage and she discussed metal recovery and remediation of mine water effluent from a siderite deposit at Nižná Slaná, eastern Slovakia.

Zuzana (right) at the Chain Locker sundowner

Jaeheon Lee (left) is an associate professor in the department of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines, USA. Prior to that he worked for Newmont and Barrick as a corporate metallurgical engineer and held the position as a faculty in the department of mining and geological engineering at the University of Arizona. He discussed the role of biohydrometallurgy for mine tailings repurposing and valorization.

Anne-Gwenaelle Guezennec, of BRGM, France is a well known expert in biohydrometallurgy and more specifically in bioleaching process design. She highlighted pilot-scale demonstrations of innovative biohydrometallurgy for sustainable valorisation of mining waste.

Anne-Gwenaelle (centre) at the welcoming reception

Ipek Tezyapar Kara (left) is a PhD Researcher at Cranfield University, UK. Ipek has a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Kocaeli University, Turkey and she completed her M.Sc. degree at the same university in 2019. She discussed the bioleaching of metal ions from Basic Oxygen Furnace sludge and dust by Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans.

The final presentation of the conference was deferred from yesterday, as Nokubonga Given Zulu was delayed due to the travel disruption. Given was born and raised in South Africa, in a small village in KwaZulu Natal. She is a graduate in Extraction Metallurgy from the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and is currently pursuing an MEng in Extraction Metallurgy at UJ, majoring in bioflotation and bioleaching.  She has also worked at the Kibali Gold Mine (Barrick Gold Corporation) as a trainee metallurgist. Her presentation investigated the application of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans in biomodification and pre-concentration of base metal sulphides prior to flotation.

Nokubonga looking after the drinks at the Chain Locker!

After a brief summary of the conference from Prof. Sue Harrison, MEI's Amanda Wills thanked everyone involved with the conference and invited everyone to join us in Cape Town in two years time for Biomining '25, before we all adjourned for a farewell Cornish Cream Tea, making sure that the jam was put on the scones before the cream!

We would greatly appreciate your views on the conference via comments to this posting.  

All the photos on the blog postings, and more, are in a Biomining '23 Album. Please feel free to download photos for your personal use. If you would like to use any photos on a company website, please acknowledge the source (MEI Blog).

#Biomining23   @barrywills