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.