ICRA Workshop programme now available

The 13th international comminution research assocation (ICRA) workshop, with the theme “using PEPT imaging techniques to advance comminution modelling” will be held in Franschhoek, South Africa in April, immediately before Comminution ’10 in nearby Cape Town. The programme is now available for viewing on MEI Online.

Positron emission particle tracking (PEPT) is a powerful technique for studying the flow of particulate systems. Initially developed for the medical imaging industry, positron emission tomography has been adapted for engineering applications at the University of Birmingham. With the high prevalence of particulate systems in the minerals industry there is interest in using PEPT to study flow behaviour in tumbling mills, stirred mills, flotation cells, etc.

PEPT is attractive for comminution modelling because it is a non-invasive technique capable of mapping in-situ flow fields in an aggressive system containing media and slurries such as those encountered in industry to the level of detail required for developing mechanistic models.

The workshop will run from April 10-12, and on the afternoon of April 12th, those delegates attending Comminution ’10 will be transferred by bus to the Vineyard Hotel in Cape Town, for the conference wine reception and registration.

Istanbul only a few days away

Next week I will be reporting from Istanbul, and the Processing of Industrial Minerals '10 conference, which starts on Thursday.

If you are still thinking of attending, just print out your registration form and bring it with you to the conference, and we will register you there.

UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor calls for honesty on climate change

The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser, John Beddington speaking to The Times in the wake of an admission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that it grossly overstated the rate at which Himalayan glaciers were receding.


Professor Beddington said that climate scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. He said that public confidence in climate science would be improved if there were more openness about its uncertainties, even if that meant admitting that sceptics had been right on some hotly-disputed issues.


He said: “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.”
He said that the false claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 had exposed a wider problem with the way that some evidence was presented.


“Certain unqualified statements have been unfortunate. We have a problem in communicating uncertainty. There’s definitely an issue there. If there wasn’t, there wouldn’t be the level of scepticism. All of these predictions have to be caveated by saying, ‘There’s a level of uncertainty about that’.”


Professor Beddington said that particular caution was needed when communicating predictions about climate change made with the help of computer models.


“It’s unchallengeable that CO2 traps heat and warms the Earth and that burning fossil fuels shoves billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. But where you can get challenges is on the speed of change.


“When you get into large-scale climate modelling there are quite substantial uncertainties. On the rate of change and the local effects, there are uncertainties both in terms of empirical evidence and the climate models themselves.”


Phil Jones, the director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and a contributor to the IPCC’s reports, has been forced to stand down while an investigation takes place into leaked e-mails allegedly showing that he attempted to conceal data.


In response to one request for data Professor Jones wrote: “We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”


Professor Beddington said that uncertainty about some aspects of climate science should not be used as an excuse for inaction: “Some people ask why we should act when scientists say they are only 90 per cent certain about the problem. But would you get on a plane that had a 10 per cent chance of landing?”

The full article and many interesting comments can be found on TimesOnline.

ABB the latest corporate supporter of MEI Conferences

We are very pleased to see the logo of the well known Swiss company ABB on MEI Online for the first time.

ABB is a global leader in power and automation technologies and was represented at a MEI Conference for the first time when they exhibited at Flotation ’09 in Cape Town 3 months ago.

They were obviously impressed with our event as they have now agreed to sponsor Comminution ’10, the next Cape Town conference, in April. They join our long standing supporters, JKTech, Magotteaux and Sigmund Lindner as major sponsors.

Is Thorium a Rare Earth Metal?

MEI Online recently added Rare Earths to the Metallic Ores Commodity pages.

The question is - what is a rare earth metal, or what is not a rare earth metal? The latter question was asked recently in a posting on the Rare Metal Blog.

The general consensus, both in that discussion, and elsewhere, is that the rare earth metals include the 15 lanthanoid elements and one or both of the elements yttrium and scandium.

Why am I concerned? My book Mineral Processing Technology was first published in 1979, the latest, 7th, edition in 2006. The Introductory chapter of every issue has contained the sentence "It is interesting to note that the so-called common metals, zinc and lead, are less plentiful than the rare-earth metals (cerium, thorium, etc.)".

Cerium is definitely a rare earth metal, but thorium? Have I been wrong all these years? The reason for the error, if there is one, is lost in the mists of time, but I suspect that the mineral monazite was to blame- the main source of thorium and often referred to as a rare earth phosphate.

I am going to assume that I was wrong, and change the commodity entry to rare earths and thorium!

News on MEI's November conferences, Cape Town

South Africa’s oldest wine estate, Groot Constantia, will be the setting for the Process Mineralogy ’10 conference dinner in November. Process Mineralogy ’10 is a 3-day conference, being held back to back with the 2-day conferences Bio and Hydrometallurgy ’10 and Zinc Processing ’10. All three conferences will be held at Cape Town’s Vineyard Hotel.

Meanwhile Outotec have announced today that their HSC Chemistry 7.0 Training Course will be held at the Vineyard Hotel, immediately following the 3 MEI Conferences. This 2-day course covers all the calculation modules and databases and provides an understanding of HSC application possibilities.