Comminution '10- the final day

Fine grinding dominated the final day of the conference. Stirred mills were originally developed for ultrafine grinding, but their use is now extending into coarser grinding applications, as discussed yesterday by Graham Davey of Metso, and further today by Hans de Waal of Xstrata Technology, South Africa. He showed how the IsaMill has shifted from its birthplace in the realm of complex, fine-grained ore bodies into mainstream coarse applications.

As Malcolm Powell, of Australia's JKMRC, discussed in the final paper of the day, enlightened circuit design is essential to the take-up of such new equipment, otherwise we will not capture the full potential benefit, or even lose the benefit altogether.

This has been an excellent conference, very intensive, with 71 presentations, and has shown that comminution continues to evolve and develop at an increasingly rapid pace. I found it difficult to sum up the conference at the end, as there has been so many cutting-edge papers, with the introduction of new techniques, such as positron emission particle tracking, and the continuing development of DEM modelling and other advanced technology.

At the turn of the 20th century stamp mills were superceded by rod and ball mills and I wonder if, 100 years later, ball mills are now set to become replaced by circuits such as HPGR-stirred mills. Maybe we will find out at Comminution '12, which will be held at the Vineyard Hotel, Cape Town from April 17-20, 2012.

I would  like to thank our sponsors for their support and also to the presenters and chairmen.  This is perhaps the first conference that I have attended where everything has run on time, leaving plenty of scope for discussions in coffee and lunch breaks.

My only hope now is that our European delegates (and the MEI team!) are not seriously delayed on their return journeys, as many international airports, including those in the UK, remain closed, due to the Icelandic volcano eruption.  However, there are worse places in the world to be stranded than Cape Town! 

It would be interesting to hear of your adventures getting back home.

Comminution '10- Day 3

A very long, intensive programme today, with 20 papers presented. The main theme was primary and secondary grinding, with all aspects of ball milling- control and optimisation, liner design, media, drives and classifier efficiency.  Graham Davey of Metso, UK presented an interesting paper showing how the Metso Vertimill outperforms secondary ball mills in terms of energy and media consumption, and this could also extend to primary grinding, including HGMS-Vertimill circuits.

Conferences are great meeting places, to renew old acquaintances and meet new people. I discovered that MEI is not the only small family business represented at the conference. One of our sponsors, D.M.M., is also a family partnership, involving (from left in photo) the Kotze family -  father Dirk, sons Cobus and Manie, and Manie's wife Hanlie.

It has also been good to catch up with old friends, particularly ex-students of mine from my Camborne days. In the photo below I am with Paul Morgan, who graduated in 1985, Gaynor Yorath, also 1985, Graham Davey (1991) and Ramoutar (Ken) Seecharan, who started his student days at CSM in the same year that I began my lecturing career, 1974. Paul is now with DRA Mineral Projects in South Africa, Gaynor with University of Cape Town, Graham with Metso in UK, and Ken with First Quantum Minerals in Mauritania.

The Great South African Braai

African drums (see video) and face-painting greeted us tonight at the lively Moyo's, in the Spier Wine Estate, Stellenbosch.  The conference dinner was a vibrant, informal affair, where the wine flowed to accompany the traditional South African BBQ, or braai.

The photos below are just two of many taken during the evening. More will be published on the Comminution '10 website next week.

Comminution '10- day 2

A different, but equally beautiful, dawn for the 2nd day of Comminution '10.

Crushing, high pressure grinding rolls, SAG and AG mills, and energy efficiency dominated today's proceedings. It was nice to see one of the morning's chairmen, Raj Rajamani, proudly sporting an MEI shirt!

I have had some very positive feedback from delegates and there has been much useful discussion, both in the conference room and the exhibition area (see YouTube video of the exhibition), where we break for coffee and lunch.

John Starkey, who presented a paper today, was very enthusiastic about the value of the conference. I last saw him at the SME meeting in Phoenix, where he was exhibiting on behalf of his company, Starkey & Associates, Inc., and I commented then that although there were around 4000 delegates in Phoenix, there would be more comminution people in Cape Town!

Comminution '10 is the biggest yet

A wonderful sight awaited us this morning on our very early arrival at the conference centre- Table Mountain bathed in the golden glow of dawn.

The 7th MEI Comminution conference got off to a good start. This is the biggest of the 7 conferences in the series, the last one in 2008 in Falmouth attracting 157 delegates.

Jon opened the conference (see YouTube for video), welcoming our 165 delegates from 23 countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Italy, Japan, Mauritania, Poland, S. Korea, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, USA, Zimbabwe.

Prof. Malcolm Powell, of Australia's JKMRC, and MEI's comminution consultant, then introduced the chairmen for the first session, which was dominated by papers on fundamentals and modelling of breakage, with 4 papers from the University of Cape Town on the relatively new mineral processing application of positron emission particle tracking (PEPT). UCT now has a very strong comminution research centre, thanks being due a lot to their links with Australia's JKMRC. UCT has a very strong presence at the conference, with 13 staff and students registered.

The afternoon session dealt with the performance of grinding circuits and the influence of external classification devices. It was nice to see Dr.Megan Becker, who called in late afternoon to discuss her consultant role in November's Process Mineralogy '10, also being held at the Vineyard.

There is much to look forward to over the next few days, with cutting edge developments in machines and processes, and new developments in techniques such as DEM and PEPT. For the first time we have delegates from the European Patents Office in Germany (pictured left with Amanda), who are keen to gain insights into the latest state of the art technologies. We have invited all delegates to add their comments to each day's blog posting and, of course, the invitation is also extended to blog readers who are not at the event.

A hot day in Cape Town

Today was extremely hot, and a relief when the sun set on Table Mountain at 5pm.  By then we were well into the conference wine reception and preregistration. Around 100 delegates registered this evening, nearly half of them arriving by coach fron Franschhoek,where they had been attending the ICRA Workshop.  The organiser, Dr. Aubrey Mainza, from UCT, was pleased that this event was attended by 45 delegates. One of those delegates was Dr. Paul Cleary of CSIRO, Australia, one of the world's experts on DEM modelling.We had a long talk about his work- he is presenting a number of papers at this conference- but what always fascinates me is his work in the movie industry, and how DEM is set to make an impact in computer generated imaging.

Then a quick meal in the bar, followed by an early night in preparation for a very early start tomorrow.