July summary: a good month to be out of Europe

Our brief visit to Birmingham at the beginning of the month was of particular interest for its social history. Birmingham was the first major manufacturing city in the world and its many inventions fed the industrial revolution. As the city grew, however, many of its workers and their families lived in poverty and it was sobering to visit the remaining back-to-back terraced houses and to spend a whole day in the Black Country, so named because of the smoke from the many thousands of iron-working foundries and forges in the 19th century and the working of the many coal seams in the area. Dudley is in the heart of the Black Country and I would highly recommend a visit to the Black Country Living Museum, the highlight of our few days.

The early 20th century village in the museum

From Birmingham we took the long train journey back to Cornwall, in time to finalise and publish the provisional programme for Flotation '23 which is shaping up to be the biggest flotation conference ever. The conference programme contains four high profile keynote lectures, beginning with Prof. Graeme Jameson, the only member of our profession who is a Fellow of The Royal Society. He is 87 years old this year and will be speaking of his lifetime in flotation research and innovation. Early in the month there was a flotation symposium in his honour at the University of Newcastle, Australia, with many eminent speakers, seen in the photo below. The conference was attended by 130 delegates from 10 countries and we are pleased that many of these will be at the MEI Conference in Cape Town. 

July was the first month in seven years when we could say that we were pleased not to be in Europe! Record high temperatures and wildfires brought misery to locals and tourists in southern Europe, particularly Greece, Italy and Spain and while those countries suffered temperatures in the mid 40s, here in Cornwall the temperature rarely soared above 20C. Jon and Kathryn and family paid a brief visit late in the month, and the children witnessed a gigantic cruise ship leaving Falmouth Harbour on a balmy evening. The Spirit of Discovery is, at 236m length, the longest ship ever to dock at the harbour's County Wharf.

On the day that they returned to Luxembourg Amanda and Richard left for a short break to celebrate her birthday on the Isles of Scilly, arguably the most beautiful area of Cornwall, arguably the most beautiful county in England. And all the time the fires and temperatures in southern Europe remained unabated.

Finally it was good to see Anna Vanderbruggen with her 2022 MEI Young Person's Award, which she was not able to receive at the recent Sustainable Minerals '23 conference. Thanks to her nominator Martin Rudolph, who collected the award on her behalf in Falmouth.

@barrywills

Recent comments

There have been comments on the following postings since the last update:

Falmouth '23 is only 10 days away
Magical Botswana: Savute and the Okavango Delta
Comparing the world's three greatest waterfalls
A brief day out at Oliver Tambo Airport, Johannesburg
Biomining '23: a summary of the technical presentations
Sustainable Minerals '23: a summary of the technical presentations
Birmingham- the hub of the industrial revolution
In memory of Richard Mozley and his wonderful machines
10 good reasons to spend some time in Cape Town
July Cornish Mining Sundowner: New electric car battery factory is great news for Cornwall's lithium companies
MEI and Twitter

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Flotation '23: the biggest flotation conference ever

We are pleased to announce that the provisional programme for Flotation '23, which will be held in Cape Town in November, has now been published. With around 180 papers scheduled for presentation in oral and poster sessions this will be the biggest conference ever specialising in flotation, the minerals industry's most important unit operation, which continues to evolve and innovate to meet the challenges of ever decreasing ore grades and complexity, and to supply the critical minerals needed to feed the green revolution. This will be a welcome return to MEI's face-to-face flotation conferences since Flotation '19 in Cape Town.

Included in the 4-day programme will be four high-profile keynote speakers and, as with all MEI Conferences, plenty of time will be made available for networking, with sundowners in the beautiful Vineyard Hotel Gardens, an informal dinner at Cape Town's Gold Restaurant, and long coffee and lunch breaks in the exhibition and poster area. The Sunday afternoon Welcome Wine Reception will also be held in the exhibition area.

Sundowner at Flotation '19

Lunch at Flotation '19

Exhibitors at previous MEI conferences have found the combined conference-exhibition has provided them with a more relaxed setting than the hurly-burly of a major trade show, and many have found the returns on the cost of their stand to be considerably higher. If you would like to exhibit, please contact us as soon as possible, as currently only three booths remain available.

Registration is now open, and we advise you to reserve your accommodation as early as you can. If you wish to stay at the Vineyard Hotel, a booking form can be found on the conference website.

We thank all our sponsors for their support, our latest being Ausmetec, an Australian owned company who developed, manufactures  and researches the unique ProFlote™ technology, a magnetic conditioning technology that selectively aggregates paramagnetic minerals.  Magnetic aggregation of minerals such as chalcopyrite has been shown to selectively increase flotation recoveries by > 1%, and this will be the subject of a paper at the conference.

We look forward to welcoming delegates from around the world to this major event.

#Flotation23

July Cornish Mining Sundowner: New electric car battery factory is great news for Cornwall's lithium companies

I have cursed the fact many times that, due to Brexit, we are no longer in Europe but this week I am more than pleased to be isolated in the UK. Countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy are suffering record high temperatures, well over 40C, but it was a pleasant 20C last night at Falmouth's Chain Locker, with a good attendance despite there being no trains into Falmouth due to yet another rail strike, and there were a few surprises.

Dominic Conybeare and Garfield Stuart, of Wardell Armstong, with
Dean Eastbury, former publishing manager of Minerals Engineering

A rare reunion of the CSM Association past and present secretaries,
Carol Richards (present), Mary Shepherd (1997-),
Linda Shimmield (1987-) and Claire Yelland (2005-)

There has been great news for Cornwall and South-West England this week. Earlier in the week Jaguar Land Rover-owner Tata confirmed plans to build its flagship electric car battery factory in the county of Somerset, next door but one to Cornwall. The new gigafactory, at 40GWh, will be one of the largest in Europe and will make batteries for Jaguar Land Rover vehicles such as Range Rover, the Defender and the Jaguar brands. The plan is to supply other car manufacturers as well, with production at the new factory due to start in 2026.

The plant at Bridgewater will be Tata's first outside India and, it is hoped, will help the car manufacturing sector transition from petrol and diesel to making electric vehicles. It is hoped that the Tata battery investment will open the door to further battery investments in the UK, which currently only has one plant in operation next to Nissan's Sunderland factory, and one barely on the drawing board in Northumberland. Another proposed battery manufacturer, in the north east of England, Britishvolt, went into administration earlier this year.

Batteries typically account for more than half of the value of an electric vehicle, so a reliable supply is expected to be vital for the future of the UK car industry, so this is great news for the UK's only home-grown source of lithium, Cornish Lithium in west Cornwall and British Lithium in the east near St. Austell, only 120 miles from the new factory.

It was good to discuss this with Alex Newns, Minerals Technology Manager at Imerys Minerals Ltd. Imerys is a French multinational company which specialises in the production and processing of industrial minerals and operates the china clay mines in the St. Austell area of East Cornwall. A few weeks ago Imerys acquired an 80% stake in British Lithium, based in the same area, the transaction bringing together Imerys’ expertise in mining, R&D and process development capabilities, as well as its lithium mineral resources, with British Lithium’s bespoke technology and state-of-the-art lithium pilot plant, which recently produced battery-grade lithium carbonate.

Since 2017, British Lithium has carried out drilling and exploration on Imerys-owned land in Cornwall and developed a unique process and pilot plant to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate. It received financial support from Innovate UK, UK's national innovation agency, and the Automotive Transformation Fund, a funding program to support the electrification of vehicles and their supply chains in the UK.

Mineral resources are estimated at 161 million tonnes at a grade of 0.54 % lithium oxide. These resources give sufficient confidence to target a life of mine exceeding 30 years at a production rate of 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent per year, potentially enough to equip 500,000 electrical vehicles per year, by the end of the decade, meeting roughly two-thirds of Britain’s estimated battery demand by 2030 when all UK car manufacturers convert to electric vehicles.

The venture has been approved by the UK Government and will reduce the UK’s and Europe’s dependence on critical raw materials imports, thus contributing to the achievement of the European and British climate change targets and the creation of the first fully integrated regional electrical vehicle value chain. The combination of this and Imerys' lithium project in France would make Imerys the largest integrated lithium producer in Europe, representing more than 20% of the announced European lithium output by 2030.

The project will generate new job opportunities and foster economic growth in Cornwall. It builds upon Imerys’ deep commitment to the UK and cements its position as a mainstay of the Cornish economy. Today, the Group employs 1,100 people across the UK, of which 830 are located in Cornwall, including five world-class open-pit mine sites in Cornwall and Devon. The project will also build upon British Lithium’s entrepreneurial spirit and committed team, who we were pleased to have well represented at last month's Sustainable Minerals '23 in Falmouth.

This is all great news for Cornish Mining and appropriately the next UK Mining Conference will be held in Falmouth in September.   

However, one of the big issues facing the industry is the recruitment of young people, so it was good to hear that the Camborne School of Mines Degree Apprenticeship Team hosted the first cohort of Mine Management degree apprenticeship students this week for a residential on the Penryn campus, ahead of their September 23 start date. The students are photographed below visiting Cornish Metals Inc. at the South Crofty mine in Camborne, learning about the history and current developments leading to its restart. Dewatering of the old mine is now well underway with a 2nd submersible pump having been installed this week.

And there was interesting news that in South Africa, Northern Cape copper mining and marketing company Copper 360 is launching a mining school in the Northern Cape, modelled on how Cornwall's CSM does things. Skills development, first and foremost, is Copper 360's immediate target, along with helping to reduce youth unemployment.

The aim initially is not to train mining engineers and confer degrees and diplomas, as other institutions do that. The primary aim is to transfer knowledge and skills within a short period of time to young people who do not have a skill or a job. A sampler, for instance, can be trained within three or four months with a certificate, giving that person value and mining companies would not have the frustration of absorbing a person and then having to train that person. It will be done at the school and that person can then go out and look for a job but he or she has then got a skill that they can use in the industry. More information on this interesting project can be found here.

There is always something of interest to discuss at the mining sundowners, and the next one, at the Chain Locker, will be on Thursday August 24th, from 5.30pm. This is a week later than originally scheduled, as Falmouth will be heaving in the week preceding due to the start of the Tall Ships Race.

@barrywills

Mill Circuits '24: a first announcement and call for abstracts

Last week we announced Physical Separation '24, which will be held in Cape Town next June. Now we are pleased to announce that Mill Circuits '24 will immediately follow Physical Separation '24 at the Vineyard Hotel.

As we enter the 4th industrial revolution, the 'green' revolution, mineral processing is recognised as one of the most important technologies in satisfying the increasing demand for all metals, particularly those that are critical in the manufacture of renewable energy sources, and for electric vehicles. 

There are tremendous challenges facing mineral processors and processes such as gravity, flotation and magnetic separation will need to be integrated more in future as ores become more complex, and how mineral processing will evolve in the future will be the subject of the papers at Mill Circuits '24.

As the demand for resources continues to increase, and amidst growing challenges of processing complex ores while minimising energy and environmental impact, we are entering an exciting time for innovation in mineral processing. Innovation in individual unit operations is complemented by innovative approaches to the entire mineral processing flowsheet, from rearrangement of an existing circuit to a new approach for a greenfield development.

This conference invites papers on new approaches to mineral processing circuits, whether through design, modelling, optimisation or operation. This includes integration of unit operations (e.g. comminution and flotation), novel flowsheets that incorporate new equipment and new approaches to optimising circuit design.

There is now a first call for abstracts, which should be submitted online by January 31st.  If accepted for presentation, authors will be asked to submit extended abstracts, which will be available on-line as open access. After the conference authors will then be invited to submit final papers for peer-review to Minerals Engineering, all accepted papers being compiled into a virtual special issue of the conference.

MEI's Media Partners are International Mining and Minerals Engineering, and our Industry Advocate is the Critical Minerals Association.

#MillCircuits24

MEI and Twitter

Twitter owner Elon Musk has changed the rules to prevent unregistered Twitter users from viewing tweets. This means that the MEI news feeds to the blog and MEI Online are unfortunately no longer available, so I would suggest that if you would like to keep up to date with all the international mineral processing news you should register and follow:

@MEIOnlineNews for international mineral processing news

@MEIConferences for the latest updates on MEI Conferences

@barrywills for the above plus other activities.

Birmingham- the hub of the industrial revolution

Barbara and I spent a few days last week in Birmingham, the UK's second-largest city, in the heart of the Midlands. It is a vibrant city, criss-crossed with canals from the industrial revolution, many of which today are lined with trendy bars and restaurants. 

Although the more northern city of Manchester was the first industrialised city (posting of 28 April 2022), centred on the textile industry and coal, Birmingham was the first major manufacturing city in the world, producing a diverse range of products in small workshops with exceptional levels of inventiveness. In the core years of the industrial revolution, between 1760 and 1850 Birmingham residents registered over three times as many patents as those of any other British town or city.

These included major developments which were essential to the emerging industrialisation. In 1709 the Birmingham-trained Abraham Darby moved to Coalbrookdale in Shropshire and built the first blast furnace to successfully smelt iron ore with coke, transforming the quality, volume and scale on which it was possible to produce cast iron. But the most significant development was that of James Watt and Matthew Boulton, who in 1775 formed a partnership to exploit Watt's patent for a steam engine with a separate condenser, a much more efficient use of fuel than in the older Newcomen engine which was in use at the time (posting of 10 August 2017). The new engine was rapidly adopted by the Cornish tin and copper mines and was later refined by the Cornish mining engineer Richard Trevithick (posting of 25 April 2015).

The gilded statue of Boulton, Watt and their employee
and later partner William Murdoch, at Centenary Square

As Birmingham expanded in the 19th century many 'back-to-back' terraced houses, with shared courtyards, were built to house the rapidly increasing population and Court 15, built in the 1830s, is the last surviving court of houses that once dominated cities in the Midlands. Now a museum in the heart of the city it is an interesting insight into how everyone who lived in back-to-back, or ‘court’ housing, shared a brewhouse (wash-house) to do their washing and a small number of outdoor toilets. Overcrowding and poor sanitation was common; this court of 11 houses was once home to as many as 60 people, with only four 'privies' between them! It was common for families to take in lodgers to help pay the rent, and these lodgers would often share a bedroom with the family's children, separated from them by a makeshift curtain.

In the courtyard at Court 15 with my sister Pat and her husband Bill

Dudley is a town in the 'Black Country' about 8 miles from the centre of Birmingham, and well worth a visit for the excellent Black Country Living Museum, an open-air museum of rebuilt historic buildings including a working replica of the Newcomen steam engine. The site also contains an underground drift mine and colliery surface buildings, showing the site's coal mining heritage.

A highlight of the site is an area where houses, shops, workshops and public buildings have been dismantled and rebuilt brick by brick to create an early 20th-century village, activities in the buildings being demonstrated by staff in period costume. The village has been the location for many TV series and films.

We didn't know what to expect from our brief visit to Birmingham, but it certainly did not disappoint and we only scratched the surface of the many attractions on offer.

@barrywills

Join us in Cape Town next June for Physical Separation '24

MEI's first Physical Separation conference was held in Falmouth in 2009 and every two years after that until Physical Separation '19. The pandemic meant that Physical Separation '21 had to be replaced in 2022 by an online event, but now we look forward to Physical Separation '24, the 8th in the series, which will be held for the first time in Cape Town at the Vineyard Hotel, near Newlands, next June. The new venue will give us more space for socialising and allow us to have a small exhibition. Immediately following Physical Separation '24 will be the 2-day Milling Circuits '24, details of which will be announced soon.

Table Mountain from the Vineyard Conference Centre

There is now a call for abstracts for Physical Separation '24, which should be submitted via the online portal by the end of January. We invite abstracts on the following areas:

• Gravity concentration methods - single and multi-G separators and dense medium separation
• Classification techniques - hydrocyclones, air classifiers etc.
• Solid-Liquid Separation - thickeners, clarifiers etc.
• Electronic Sorting
• Magnetic and electrostatic separation
• Microwave technology. 

If accepted for presentation authors will be asked to submit extended abstracts which will be available on-line as open access. After the conference authors will then be invited to submit final papers for peer-review to Minerals Engineering, all accepted papers being compiled into a virtual special issue of the conference.

We have pleasure in welcoming the first sponsor to the conference, Polish company Comex, who provide innovative sorting systems and pulverizing technology, mainly to the industrial minerals industry. Comex Group joins our Media Partners International Mining and Minerals Engineering, and our Industry Advocate the Critical Minerals Association.

#PhysicalSeparation24

The design and evolution of flotation circuits

We are in for an interesting Wednesday morning at Flotation '23 in November, where the theme will be flotation circuits and plant operations, commencing with a keynote lecture from Luis A. Cisternas, Professor and Director of the Doctoral Program on Mineral Processing Engineering at Universidad de Antofagasta, Chile.

The keynote will investigate the circuit design of polymetallic minerals, including desulfurisation, analysed from the point of view of the effect of stage recovery uncertainty, the impact of the design type on costs, energy use, and environmental effects and the influence of the design strategy applied. 

Luis will argue that the most widely used separation sequence in practice is the least efficient from the environmental and economic point of view and a new separation strategy will be proposed which delivers better results than traditional sequences. A design procedure for polymetallic flotation circuits will be presented, where desulfurisation is considered an integral part of the design.

This will be followed by a presentation from Jim Finch, Gerald G. Hatch Professor Emeritus and an Industry Professor of Mineral Processing at McGill University, Canada. He will ask whether flotation circuits have adapted considering their long history of modelling.

By integrating a measure of separation efficiency (SE) into linear circuit analysis a way to compare circuits will be introduced. One finding is that the 3-stage closed rougher-scavenger-cleaner (R-S-C) network provides the highest circuit SE. Reviewing 3-stage circuits in Canadian practice from the 1970s to the present Jim will show that about 40% continue to use this R-S-C arrangement. 

Some plants use the rougher-cleaner-cleaner/scavenger network and one example will be identified where the cleaner/scavenger is placed on the second cleaner stage rather than the first stage which is more common. That there may be an SE advantage to having the CS on the second cleaner will be explored, illustrating the utility of the comparison method.

We can expect much intense discussion on these two presentations, as well as on the papers that follow, detailing operational developments in flotation plants around the world. The session will be of particular value and interest to plant operators looking to improve their operations.

#Flotation23

June summary: a memorable month for varying reasons

MEI Conferences in Falmouth occupied the first full week of the month, Biomining '23, followed by Sustainable Minerals '23. Although the conferences were successful, we have decided rather reluctantly that these will be the last in the UK for the foreseeable future. Travel to Cornwall has always been an issue because of its remoteness, but this time it was exacerbated by trains strikes, flight cancellations and some Brexit related issues such as delegates from many countries having problems obtaining visas. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently pledged that the UK would become a power-house of science, so it seems absurd to make it difficult for scientists to enter the UK for a 2-day conference, and in many cases having to pay substantial amounts for the privilege.

We will miss the conference evening coastal walks,
particularly in June when the wild flowers are in bloom

The warm sunny weather during the conference week was a welcome bonus and the evening coastal path walks were enjoyed by all but I felt a little ashamed of Government policies when we passed the Falmouth Docks, and looked down on the huge dry dock which held not a fine sailing ship but a large ugly barge. This was being refitted and once prepared will be sent to the Dorset coast to provide accommodation for around 500 male asylum seekers. Many would say a cruel way to deal with desperate people escaping the perils of their homeland. The barge arrived on May 9th, for a scheduled two week refit. It is still here, presumably because it has been found to be not fit for purpose.

Two days after the Falmouth conferences Amanda was in Wadebridge, north Cornwall, with members of the Helford River Gig Club, at the Royal Cornwall Show, a major annual event which is represented by people who live in farming communities in Cornwall. 

The Cornish pilot gig is a six-oared rowing boat, and the club has become a major part of Amanda's life- I've no idea why:

Three days after the Falmouth conference Barbara and I flew from London Heathrow Airport to Johannesburg, en route to the SAIMM Copper-Cobalt conference by the Victoria Falls near Livingstone, Zambia. It turned out to be a nightmare three days in which we spent 7 hours at the airport in Johannesburg before returning to Cornwall (posting of 12th June). I am pleased to hear, however, that the Zambia conference was a great event.

The major event in Cornwall in June was the national celebrations for Armed Forces Day which was held in Falmouth. Crowds flocked in to see over 1,000 service personnel and bands parade through the town centre in the largest and longest military parade ever held in the UK.

On a stunning day, the crowds on the seafront were entertained by aerial displays led by the Red Arrows, now familiar visitors to Falmouth.

The Red Arrows perform over Falmouth Bay...

...watched by crowds on Gyllyngvase Beach

And last Thursday was a very pleasant ending to the month; Barbara and I were invited to join the reunion of the Camborne School of Mines Class of '65 in Falmouth. I graduated from Leeds University in 1966 but never have there been such reunions, which speaks volumes for the pride that CSM Alumni have for their alma mater.

It was fascinating to talk to these now retired mining engineers about their interesting lives in the industry. Probably no more so than Tim Wadeson and his wife Jennifer, who have moved house 30 times in the course of Tim's travels around the world.  They now live in the Isle of Man, after Tim's retirement as Group Technical Director with Anglo American. Tim was underground manager at Nchanga during my time there in the early 70s.

Tim and Jennifer Wadeson

It was particularly good to catch up with Ron Easteal and his wife Rose, all the way from Canada for the reunion. 

With Ron and Rose Easteal

On leaving CSM Ron had studied for a higher degree at Queen's University, Canada, and in 1977 brought the Queen's University squash team over to Camborne, where they thrashed the CSM team! He did confess that the team was seeded with a high ranked Canadian squash player, and I conceded that we had recruited Russel Harris, the Cornish #1, who is centre on the photo below. Ron is 1st left on the back row, and I am 1st left on the front row. Ron had a complete career change while at Queen's, ending his professional life as a Professor of Anatomy!

A great ending to an eventful month.

@barrywills