See who is coming to Comminution '18

Comminution '18 begins next month in Cape Town, and is promising to be one of the best in the series, with a fine timetable, strong corporate support, and an impressive evolving delegate list, which is now available for viewing.

Current sponsors

We advise that you register and reserve your accommodation as soon as possible, as April in Cape Town is a very popular time. If you are worried about the water shortage in the city, you need not be, as 'Day Zero' has been moved again, to July 9th,  so the conference and your accommodation will not be affected.

#Comminution18 for latest updates.

Storm Emma devastates Falmouth's beaches

Last night I was captured on CCTV as I arrived home after my 28 hour journey from Minneapolis. Falmouth was looking lovely in its unusual carpet of snow.

But snow in Cornwall is transient and during the early hours of this morning the south coasts of Devon and Cornwall were hit with the full force of Storm Emma, cutting off the main line rail service into Cornwall, and with roads impassable many of the locals have got what they have always wished for, Cornwall cut off from the rest of England, albeit only briefly.

This afternoon I took time off from writing my report on the SME to walk down to the beaches, and was amazed to see the devastation that last night's storm had caused.

Gyllyngvase Beach, Falmouth

Swanpool Beach

Hard to believe that in a couple of month's time we may be enjoying scenes such as this:

And an email just in from Mike Battersby, of Comminution '18 sponsor Maelgwyn Mineral Services. This is the scene outside the MMS office in Cardiff:

 

A brief window into Falmouth

Britain is in the grip of Storm Emma at the moment, and South-West England has been hit hard, as we are not used to snow in these parts.

After a morning at the SME Meeting, I left Minneapolis at mid-day on Wednesday for Chicago, where I spent 6 hours at the airport before taking the delayed BA flight to London Heathrow. The weather had caused severe disruptions to train services, the Express from Heathrow to Paddington Station running only intermittently, and Paddington effectively being closed for much of the day.

Luckily the first train out to Cornwall was mid-afternoon, and I gratefully took a seat on this, which eventually arrived in Truro 80 minutes late due to frozen points at Newton Abbot. And even luckier, the last train to Falmouth had been held to take passengers from the London train, so I eventually arrived home, 28 hours after leaving the hotel in Minneapolis!

Only this morning do I realise how fortunate I was yesterday. The 6pm train from Paddington arrived in Truro three and a half hours late, at 2.30 this morning, and all trains to Cornwall are cancelled today due to problems as always on the line at Dawlish in Devon.

Most of the snow in Falmouth has now disappeared after overnight rain, but this is what I missed yesterday:

Falmouth sea front (photo Lee Stephens- Facebook)

 

Canadian Achievements in Flotation Technology : A Retrospective

More than a century after its adoption and adaptation as a major mineral separation technology within the mining industry, significant new developments in flotation continue to appear. A number of important contributions have come from Canadians and a selection of these will be highlighted by Dr. Jan Nesset, of NesseTech Consulting Services Inc., Canada, in a keynote lecture at Flotation '19 next year in Cape Town.

Jan, who is also an Adjunct Professor at McGill University, will discuss the developments that led to the successful milling of the highly complex Sullivan ore by Cominco starting in the early 1920’s, to column flotation developed in the 1960’s, to the staged flotation reactor technology recently introduced by Woodgrove Technologies. The development of industrially-robust sensors at McGill has permitted new insights into the process, including the key relationships between bubble size and frothers. The application of these gas dispersion tools has resulted in significant process gains and some examples will be highlighted. The joint development of the continuous mini pilot plant by Canadian laboratories and equipment suppliers is also seen as a significant contribution to flotation technology as evidenced by its adoption by testing laboratories worldwide. Although not directly a flotation technology, the development of mass balancing and data reconciliation methods and software (e.g. Bilmat), begun modestly as a joint government-industry collaboration in the early 1970’s, has evolved into an essential tool for testing, production accounting and resource management at mineral processing, mining and metallurgical sites. Some comments and historical perspectives will also be offered in the keynote. 

Dr. Jan Nesset obtained his Bachelor’s, Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in metallurgical and materials engineering from McGill University, specializing in mineral processing. He spent 24 years with Noranda (now Glencore); 15 in milling operations as a process engineer at their Brunswick Mines operation and in senior management at their Mattabi/Lyon Lake and their Geco mining operations, and nine years in industrial R&D at the Noranda Technology Centre (NTC) in Montreal Canada. He won the Noranda/Falconbridge Chairman’s Team Technology Award in 1998 and in 2000 while at NTC. He has authored/co-authored some 50 technical publications in journals and conference proceedings. Since 2003 he has been a consultant to the mining industry, primarily in the areas of flotation, gas dispersion/cell hydrodynamics technology, and self‐heating of sulphide mixtures. Jan is a Fellow, a Distinguished Lecturer (2008-9) and Life Member of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (CIM) and served as Chair of the Canadian Mineral Processors Society of CIM in 2002-2003, and served as a member of the CMP Board of Directors from 2000 to 2018.  He was a member of the Organizing Committee for IMPC 2016 in Quebec City. In 2018 he compiled and edited the published CIM volume Canadian Contributions to Mineral Processing Technology 1968-2018, on which his keynote will be partly based.

#Flotation19

Sunday in Minneapolis

I registered early for the SME Meeting this morning, after a very cold minus 9 C half mile walk from my hotel to the Convention Centre.

Later in the morning it was a balmy minus 6 so I took a long walk along the western bank of the Mississippi River. Minneapolis is a very attractive city, helped a great deal today by the blue sky and sunshine, and yesterday's heavy snowfall.

Many people have been delayed by yesterday's bad weather, so there was noticeably fewer people at the late afternoon reception and exhibition opening. It will be interesting to see what the turnout is like during the week, and how it compares with previous years.

Much good news at the Redruth mining sundowner

Last night's February Cornish Mining Sundowner was held at the Trefusis Arms in the historic mining town of Redruth. Amongst the regulars were owners of two of Cornwall's most progressive companies, Nick Wilshaw of Grinding Solutions Ltd, a sponsor of Comminution '18, and James Strongman of Petrolab Ltd, a sponsor of Process Mineralogy '18. GSL, who are currently looking to employ more mineral processors for their rapidly expanding business, will be teaming up with Petrolab and others in April to run a one day seminar immediately prior to Comminution '18 in Cape Town. It was also good to see Phil Hingston, of Bisha Mining, Eritrea, and his wife Josephine, and mining entrepreneur Nick Clarke, and his wife Pauline, who recently bought a house in Falmouth.

Barry Wills, Steve Pendray, Pete Shepherd, Nick Wilshaw, James Strongman and Phil Hingston

Josephine Hingston, Barbara Wills, Pauline and Nick Clarke, Bill Hussey,
Alan Matthews, Bentley Orchard and Linda Matthews

Redruth was one of the wealthiest towns in the UK in the 19th century, being the  centre of Cornwall’s former copper and tin mining industry, then the world's largest and richest metal mining area. Although those halcyon days are long passed, there was good news last night of the resurgence of Cornwall's minerals industry.

The Camborne School of Mining was formed in 1888, but the mining school at Redruth preceded it by about 6 years. In 1910 the Redruth and Penzance mining schools were merged with the Camborne school to form the Camborne School of Metalliferous Mining, the modern CSM.  At the last sundowner there was a rumour of mineral processing coming back to CSM, and it was great to hear last night that this is no longer a rumour.  There will be two MSc courses  launched this year, and both have just received full programme approval. One is a one year full-time mineral processing course to be based on the campus which will start in Sept 2018.  This will be open to a wide range of graduates in geology, mining, chemical engineering, or other similar subjects, wishing to specialise in this area. The other course is a three year professional MSc with a significant component on minerals processing, which will start in January 2019.

The great era of Cornish tin mining ended in 1998 with the closure of the South Crofty mine between Camborne and Redruth. Now everyone is optimistic that mining will soon commence again at this old mine. Strongbow Exploration, the Canadian company that is seeking to revive tin production in Cornwall, plans to list this year on London’s AIM exchange for growing companies to raise development funding. Tin prices have been climbing around 8 percent so far this year to nearly $22,000, compared with roughly $5,000 when South Crofty closed and a peak of $33,600 recorded in 2011. There is a high demand for tin now, which has multiple industrial uses, including in electronics.

Strongbow's aim is to get production back in 2021, and the mine has sufficient tin for at least eight years of mine life, although industry sources say the high quality, super-giant lode could carry on producing for decades. It is estimated that around 275 direct jobs and four times that number of indirect roles could be created. The current major project is dewatering the mine and treating the water, and the Environment Agency has issued a permit for the discharge of up to 25,000 cubic metres of treated water into the nearby Red River, which reaches the sea near Gwithian on the north coast; the company estimates that the water will be removed by the end of 2020.

An added bonus for Cornish mining is that Strongbow also has a mineral rights agreement with British company Cornish Lithium, which means it will get royalties from any lithium extracted from brine springs in the area. High levels of lithium readings were first recognised in 1864 in water flowing into Cornish mines, but there was then no market for this lightest of metals, and when the mines in Cornwall closed it was largely forgotten. Now lithium, vital for rechargeable batteries, has been named a strategically important mineral for the UK by the Government because of its importance for developing industries and its scarcity. At present, it is mainly mined in remote parts of Chile, Australia and Nevada in the USA but without a home grown source of lithium the UK would be vulnerable to shortfall as global demand increases. Cornish Lithium, led by Camborne School of Mines graduate Jeremy Wrathall, has secured the rights to develop and extract, via deep drill holes, the lithium deposits under Cornwall, undertaking the largest, single unified exploration project in the county's history, the vast deposits having the potential to unleash a new major industry in the county.

So, much to look forward to as Cornwall's mining heritage takes on a new life. Hopefully more news and gossip at the next sundowner, which will be at the Portreath Arms, in the North Cornwall village of Portreath, on March 22nd.

Twitter @barrywills