IMPC Lifetime Achievement Award to Robin Batterham

At last night's International Mineral Processing Congress  Awards Banquet in Maryland, USA, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Mineral Processing Council was bestowed to Prof. Robin Batterham, Emeritus Kernot Professor of Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Robin with Congress Chairman John Marsden, IMPC President Ralph Holmes
and past president Cyril O'Connor

Robin Batterham is President of the International Mineral Processing Congress to be held in Melbourne in 2028, and he chaired the Asia-Pacific Regional IMPC Conference in Melbourne in 2022 and the IMPC Congress held in Brisbane in 2010.

His interests span mining, mineral processing, metal production and energy systems as well as farming.  In all of these he focuses on what can be improved or made better in terms of people, the planet and prosperity, the classic aims of sustainability, and MEI was proud to have him as a keynote lecturer at Sustainable Minerals '16 in Falmouth, presenting "The mine of the future - even more sustainable".

Robin relaxing at Falmouth's Chain Locker during Sustainable Minerals '16

Prof. Robin Batterham was born in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton and graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1965 with a degree in chemical engineering.  He was awarded a PhD from the same institution in 1969 and received a scholarship from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to undertake postgraduate studies at the Central Research Laboratories of ICI in the UK.  

Robin returned to Australia in 1970 and progressed to the position of Chief Research Scientist in the CSIRO Division of Mineral Engineering, where he was later appointed as Chief of the then Division of Mineral and Process Engineering.  He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) in 1988, and he served as its national President in 2007 to 2012.  Subsequently in 2014, ATSE established the Batterham Medal in his honour as an early career award in the field of engineering.

In 1999, Robin was appointed Chief Scientist of Australia, a role which he undertook simultaneously to acting as Chief Technologist for the multinational mining company Rio Tinto.  He served as Chief Scientist with distinction, advising the Australian Government on scientific matters.  In May 2005, he stepped down as Chief Scientist of Australia and took on a full-time position at Rio Tinto, including a period as Global Head of Innovation.  Many of the company’s industrial technology successes are a result of his work.

From May 2004 to May 2005, Robin was President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for the modelling of iron ore systems and team leadership in the development of innovative industrial metallurgical processes. He was appointed an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2004. In addition he is a Fellow by election to Academies in Australia (2), England, USA, Switzerland, China and India.  He is also a member of the very prestigious Order of Australia.

Robin has also received a number of prestigious awards, including the Kernot Medal from Melbourne University, the President’s Medal of the Australian Sugar Cane Technologists, the Chemeca Medal, the Esso Award for Chemical Engineering, the AusIMM Institute Medal in 2004, the AusIMM President’s Medal, the Centenary Medal of Australia, and the AusIMM Sir William Connolly Memorial Medal. 

After a period as an honorary staff member and a Professorial Fellow, Robin joined the Melbourne School of Engineering as Kernot Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2010.  He is devoted to furthering energy research in the University and is deeply involved with the Melbourne Energy Institute.  He brings considerable expertise and experience to the School, building on his long and very distinguished career in industry and government.  Robin chairs the Net Zero Australia project, is Chief Technologist of a major project on green steel and leads an initiative on soil carbon measurement. Recently he has been the co-inventor of seven patent applications, with one patent recently granted in the USA.  Robin’s other interests are centred on innovation in energy systems, including options for future generation and distribution, transport options, energy reduction in comminution and dewatering of low-grade materials, together with breakthrough work on low emission aluminium production. 

Robin Batterham's stellar career makes him a very worthy winner of the IMPC's most prestigious award and MEI congratulates him on behalf of the whole mineral processing community.

IMPC Lifetime Achievement Award to John Herbst

At last night's International Minerals Processing Congress Awards Banquet in Maryland, USA, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Mineral Processing Council was bestowed to Prof. John Herbst, Adjunct Professor of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Utah. Unfortunately, due to ill-health, John was unable to be at the Congress to accept the award in person.

Over the years John and I have bumped into each other in various parts of the world, and it was good to have John and his wife Cindy with us in 1998 for Minerals Engineering '98 in Edinburgh.

John and Cindy with Peter Radziszewski and Barbara Wills in Edinburgh, 1998

In a professional career spanning over five decades Professor John A. Herbst has had exceptionally wide-ranging global impact on mineral processing research and technology through his innovative, pioneering work, both as a member of the academic community and as a recognized industrial leader. He is recognised worldwide for his seminal contributions in the areas of modeling, simulation, optimisation and control of mineral processing unit operations in general, and particularly on industrial comminution and flotation circuits.

As a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, John Herbst became one of the pioneers in applying population balance models to ball mill comminution. After joining the faculty at the University of Utah, he collaborated with other faculty members and quickly established a research group that applied mathematical modeling to solving a range of mineral processing problems, as exemplified by several significant contributions to the metallurgical processing of particulate materials including the design of leaching systems, on-line size measurement, models for mineral liberation, ultrafine grinding of coal with stirred ball mill grinding.

He and his graduate students developed several computer programs that led to simulators for designing grinding and flotation systems. Not only did John work with ultrafine grinding, he developed models for crushers, large-scale ball mills, and particularly for autogenous and semi-autogenous (SAG) mills. These years also saw his evolving interest in developing and applying model- based control strategies for grinding and flotation plants,an area in which he had very significant industrial impact. Much of his later career was devoted to the optimisation and control of different kinds of mineral processing plants operations around the world.

Because of his growing interest in applying advanced technology directly to the mineral industry, Dr. Herbst founded Control International that was subsequently associated with Armco, which was the largest producer of steel grinding balls in the U.S. Online sensing and model-based control for grinding and flotation circuits in mineral processing plants was a major activity of the company. 

John sold his part of the business in 1996 and formed J.A. Herbst & Associates, LLC, in Salt Lake City. The overall purpose was to support companies using advanced technology in their processing operations. They developed a dynamic flowsheet simulator, a soft- sensor line for comminution, and an image analysis system for coarse size particles in grinding systems.

From 2000-2016 John was with Metso Minerals, becoming Chief Scientist and Manager of Technology Development before becoming the Robert E. Murray Chair and Professor of Mining Engineering at West Virginia University, and then Adjunct Professor at the University of Utah.

Prof. Herbst has participated and presented papers in all IMPC meetings from Xth International  Mineral Processing Congress, London, 1973, to XXVII International Mineral Processing Congress, Santiago, 2014. In 1995 he was the principal organiser and President of the XIXth IMPC/SME Conference and Exhibition held in San Francisco.

John Herbst with former Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Doug Fuerstenau (1995) and Peter King (2003) at IMPC 2003

He created the International Comminution Research Association and as its president he helped organise nine symposia in eight countries around the world. He has been a longtime member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Mineral Processing, Mineral & Metallurgical Transactions, and Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review.

He was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE)in 1992, election to NAE being considered to be one of the very highest recognitions given to an engineer. The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) has honored him with several different awards: the TMS/AIME Robert Lansing Hardy Gold Medal Award (1971) for the most promising metallurgist under the age of 30, SME/AIME Henry Krumb Lecturer (1982), SME/AIME Antoine M. Gaudin Award (1989), SME/AIME Arthur F. Taggart Award (1990), and the AIME Robert H. Richards Award (1993).

In 1995 he received the Frank F. Aplan Award from the United Engineering Foundation. In addition to several teaching awards, the University of Utah recognised him with their Distinguished Research Award (1984).

Congratulations John, on behalf of all the MEI team.

IMPC Distinguished Service Award to Tim Napier-Munn

At last night's International Mineral Processing Congress Awards Banquet in Maryland, USA, I was delighted to hear that Prof. Tim Napier-Munn was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award of the International Mineral Processing Council, but I was disappointed that he was unable to attend the Congress to receive it.

I have known Tim for 37 years and regard him as one of the most outstanding members of the mineral processing fraternity. He was the first person who I interviewed for the MEI Blog back in 2014. When Elsevier asked me for a 7th edition of my book Mineral Processing Technology it was Tim who I turned to as the first co-editor in the series. The book was successful and was also translated into a Chinese edition.

His own book Statistical Methods for Mineral Engineers, based on his statistics course which he has presented around the world, has become a standard reference for mineral processing researchers and he is globally recognised as probably the leading exponent in the area of statistical analysis of mineral processing. Another of his many scholarly contributions was his editorship of the JKMRC “Blue Book” on comminution in 1996.

There can be few people in the global minerals processing community who have made more significant contributions to further our understanding of the technology of minerals processing than Tim, across a career spanning almost 50 years, and for the impact such outputs have had on industrial practice. 

Much of his career has been spent in senior positions at the eminent Julius Kuttschnitt Minerals Research Centre (JKMRC) at the University of Queensland.  Apart from his seminal contributions in processing technologies he has made noteworthy contributions to the study and modelling of dense-medium hydrocyclones. His PhD on this topic was undertaken at Imperial College London in 1984, but his interest continues, and he has published numerous highly cited papers on the analysis and modelling of these and other hydrocyclones. He has also made major contributions in areas such as comminution, classification and flotation and he is arguably best known for his contributions in the general area of modelling and simulation of mineral processes. 

Perhaps his most significant service to the industry has been through his Directorship of the JKMRC and JKTech.  He has played a major role in these organisations, which under his leadership have produced many outstanding graduates who are today playing major leadership roles on many continents. 

Professor Tim Napier-Munn’s many other achievements include the award of numerous prestigious honours from the IOM3 and AusIMM and he is without doubt a worthy recipient of the IMPC Distinguished Service Award.