Mill Circuits '24 gets underway

Physical Separation '24 finished on Wednesday evening with farewell drinks, immediately followed by welcoming drinks for the 2-day Mill Circuits '24 conference.

Wednesday evening welcoming drinks for the first arrivals

On Thursday morning I welcomed the 52 delegates from 17 countries to this inaugural mill circuits conference, and thanked our sponsors, FLSmidth, Capstone Copper and Conundrum, our media partners International Mining and Minerals Engineering, and our industry advocate the Critical Minerals Association.

Friday's panel discussion is on the future evolution of mill circuits, so I set the scene for this by summarising the evolution of mill circuits during the three industrial revolutions, steam, electricity and computers, leading to the present 4th revolution, the Green Revolution.

The panel discussion will be chaired by Dariusz Lelinski, of FLSmidth, USA and he got the technical sessions off to a great start with his keynote lecture showing how innovation in flotation technology can deliver sustainable productivity, now and into the future.

One of the innovations he discussed was FLSmidth's Reflux Flotation Cell (RFC) invented by Kevin Galvin, of the University of Newcastle, Australia. During the coffee break I caught up with the FLSmidth team with Prof. Galvin. Dariusz is in the centre, holding a model of the RFC, with Prof. Galvin on the right.

The keynote was followed by eight presentations. These will be summarised in a report in a couple of weeks' time.

During the lunch break it was good to catch up with two debut delegates, Ivan Verzhenyuk, from Metso, Kazakhstan and Iakov Vdovin of TEM-Partner, Russian Federation, a company which supplies process equipment for the mining industry.

Ivan and Iakov

Gebr. Pfeiffer is a family-run business with its head office in Kaiserslautern, Germany, The company has pioneered the development of modern grinding, separating, drying, slaking, and calcining technologies for more than 150 years. Represented by Patrick Heyd and Bruno Kovacs, they are seen below talking to Craig Macmillan, of Africa Mining and Industrial Solutions, Namibia.

Patrick, Craig and Bruno

Groot Constantia is South Africa's oldest wine-producing farm, situated in the beautiful Constantia Valley, under Table Mountain.  Its Simon's Restaurant provided a relaxing venue at the end of the day for the informal conference dinner.

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