Comminution ’12 is only 2 months away

Over 100 registrations have already been received for April’s Comminution ’12 in Cape Town, which looks set to be even bigger than Comminution ’10, held at the same venue in the leafy suburb of Claremont.

During the intensive 4 days, authors from 21 countries will present 78 papers dealing with all aspects of the comminution of minerals.

18 companies have exhibition booths in the conference lunch and coffee-break area, and there will also be plenty of time for networking during the two wine functions, immediately prior to, and after the closing of the conference. These will be held in the Vineyard Hotel’s splendid gardens under Table Mountain.

Cape Town’s Gold Restaurant will be the setting for the conference dinner, which was a highlight of last November’s Flotation ’11 conference.

So if you have any interest in comminution, Cape Town is the place to be in 2 month’s time.

International Mining Games comes to Cornwall

Now in its 34th year, for the first time the International Mining Games will be held outside the US or Australia. The Camborne School of Mines (CSM) will host the competition at the King Edward Mine Museum, near Camborne, Cornwall, UK, from 31st March to 1st April 2012. The event will be free and open to spectators.

The Camborne-Redruth area around King Edward Mine

40 teams from all over the world will compete in physical challenges based on traditional mining techniques, many of which were originally developed in Cornwall in the 1700s and 1800s. Events such as ‘jackleg drilling’, ‘mucking’ and ‘track stand’ test the competitors’ physical strength, speed and endurance, while challenges like surveying depend more on knowledge and quick thinking. All rely on preparation and excellent teamwork. CSM is entering three teams and the students have put together a busy training schedule, around their studies.

CSM student Oakley Turner is leading the organisation of the games. He said: “The skills required for these traditional techniques are now extremely rare, but an understanding of them is still vital to the mining industry. CSM students are among the few people with this expertise, which puts our graduates in very high demand among employers. Hosting the International Mining Games is a wonderful way for us to celebrate our skills and bring a really exciting event to Cornwall. It will be a great opportunity for local people to see these techniques being carried out in the same part of the world as they were originally developed.”

The International Mining Games started in 1978 in honour of the 91 miners who died in the Sunshine Mine disaster, USA in 1972, as well as miners that have since died in the line of duty. Since then, it has grown and evolved and also provides a talent scouting opportunity for mining companies and companies in related sectors, as well as bringing together mining students from all over the world.

Head of Camborne School of Mines Professor Frances Wall said: “We are very proud that our students are bringing this prestigious competition to Cornwall. Representatives from some of the world’s biggest mining companies will be attending, so this will be an excellent opportunity for our students to network and potentially secure future employment.

KEM Museum

King Edward Mine, known to generations of students as KEM, was for over a century CSM's field station for practical mining and surveying. Now open as a museum, the mine is owned by Cornwall Council and is managed by a team of volunteers who started restoration work on the site 25 years ago. Mining Engineer Tony Brooks, former CSM student and director of King Edward Mine Museum, said: "We are delighted to be able to help host the Mining Games at KEM. There could be nowhere more appropriate for this event. This will be good for CSM, Camborne and Cornwall".

The status of spirals in modern mineral processing plants

Some time ago (June 2009 and June 2010) I discussed the demise of the Reichert Cone, which was very popular as a gravity roughing device in the 1970s, but was made obsolete in the early 1980s by the introduction of high capacity, wash-waterless spirals.

In MEI's LinkedIn group Minerals Engineers, the question has been asked whether spirals are still being used in new mineral processing operations. Judging by the replies, they sure are, in applications including the beneficiation of heavy mineral sands, chromite, tantalite, iron ores and fine coal.

The spiral concentrator is one of the most effective, low-cost devices for the gravity beneficiation of ores, but I would like to know if anyone can advise us on recent developments in spiral concentration technology, and whether their use is limited to roughing operations, with cleaning undertaken in enhanced gravity devices?

Important changes to Minerals Engineering and ScienceDirect

Ever since its inception in 1988, the volume number of Minerals Engineering has been synonymous with the year. Last year’s volume, number 24, represented the 24th year of the journal.

Each volume has, for many years, contained 15 issues, but this year will herald significant changes, which need some explanation.

There has been a major shift in recent years to electronic formatting of journals, and ScienceDirect usage continues to grow, with over 400,000 downloads of Minerals Engineering papers in 2011, compared with 372,500 in 2010.

Electronic publishing has allowed very rapid publication of papers. Once I, as editor, finally accept a paper for publication, it is almost immediately published in ScienceDirect, and is currently available for download in the section Articles in Press. This is effectively a holding area where accepted papers are stored until allocated an issue number and pagination. Each paper is assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), a unique alphanumeric character string, which never changes. It can be used for citing a document in press, because it has not yet received its full bibliographic information. When the paper is eventually published in hard copy, it can then also be cited by its Volume Number, Issue Number and page numbers. Unfortunately many authors (and at least one editor!) find this a confusing system, hence the move this year to what is known as Article Based Publishing (ABP) workflow.

Commencing this year, issue numbers will disappear, and there will be 15 Volumes allocated for each year. Each Volume will start its life as an empty shell, and as soon as a paper has been accepted it will be assigned a specific Volume, and the page numbers will be immediately known, as each Volume will commence at page 1. The article can therefore be immediately cited as Minerals Engineering Volume XX (2012) pps.YY-ZZ, which will be exactly the same citation as when the article appears in print a few months later.

The benefit of more flexibility in opening more than one Volume at the same time will greatly benefit Minerals Engineering which publishes a relatively high number of special issues, which will be allocated their own Volume numbers. This year, using the new ABP system, special issues on Sustainability (Volume 29), Computational Modelling (Volume 31), Physical Separation (Volume 32) and Froth Flotation (Volumes 36-38) are scheduled.

Please contact me if you need any further clarification on these changes.

A final reminder for MEI Award nominations

A final reminder that nominations for the 2011 MEI Young Person's Award should be submitted no later than February 17th.

Results of the MEI competition

We had 59 entries to our mini-competition, inviting you all to guess which of the postings on the blog has had the most views.

Unfortunately no one has won the free conference registration, in fact no one even named any of the first five highest views. Which were:

1. Very surprisingly, with 1134 page views was the posting of 9th March 2011, SME Mining Engineering Handbook, 3rd edition.

2. Did column flotation cells ever realise their potential? (14 May 2010)

3. Metplant '11 conference diary (12 August 2011).

4. ScienceDirect- not just for journals (4 October 2010).

5. MEI Award 2011 (16 November 2011).

Thanks to all of you who entered for your interest.