Mill Operators Conference 2014- how was it for you?

Jon's photos taken at The AusIMM's Mill Ops '14 (see Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) capture the atmosphere of the event, but now we would like to hear from the mineral processors who were there.

What did you think of the conference technically, what were the highlights for you, etc?  Your comments would be greatly appreciated.

International Mineralogical Association (IMA '14) Day 3

Megan Becker reports on today's events at IMA '14:

This morning I elected to spend on a portion of my day listening to some more unusual talks, sitting in on the session on Inorganic fibres, biosphere and risk assessment, i.e. asbestos. I was encouraged to learn that this field of research is alive and well pulling in experts from numerous disciplines, particularly within Italy. The definition of an asbestiform mineral really depends not only on its high aspect ratio, but also its biopersistence within the lungs, and its surface reactivity. It is quite thought provoking to reflect on what has been done to society in the name of mining and manufacturing, hearing the stories of young girls and boys working within asbestos mines and products manufacturing in the last 100 years. One is also given some insights into just how difficult it is to tally and understand the statistics related to different types of deaths and uncoupling the effects of work environment (mining and processing, including handling of different asbestiform minerals), family situation (e.g. those who wash clothes of mine workers), and local environment (position to mining and engineering activities). However, it is also encouraging to see that researchers are thinking about ways of remediation of these sites, including developing technologies to dehydrate these minerals back into benign anhydrous silicate minerals with numerous possible downstream uses.

It was also great to meet up again with some old friends, and of course be reminded of just how quickly the tables can turn in the mining industry. Once a great team working together at Intellection on QEMSCAN in Brisbane, we now see Alan Butcher, Paul Gottlieb and Al Cropp working for competing companies in auto-SEM technology, all three being sponsors of Process Mineralogy '14, viz: QEMSCAN & MLA from FEI, TIMA from TESCAN, and the newly launched Mineralogic from Zeiss. It was also good to catch up with Al again, who was the person who most patiently first sat with me teaching me the QEMSCAN iDiscover software back in the days of Intellection.

Paul Gottlieb (TESCAN), Al Cropp (Zeiss) and Alan Butcher (FEI)

The FEI booth with Alan Butcher (FEI – middle) and local service agents IMP (Pierre Hofmeyer, left)
and Kosta Kousiakis (right)

Following the afternoon session, a 2nd poster session was held. I’m continually reminded how this isn’t always the most effective way to transfer information with very few delegates taking the time to walk through and engage with the poster presenters (many of whom are students).

The “casual” conference dinner was held this evening at the Barnyard Theatre in Johannsburg. We all piled into 3 large buses and worked out way to the theatre having a very informal dinner (pizzas) before being treated to live entertainment: Back to the 80’s! Needless to say the evening was a great success and ended up with many happily dancing – age, gender, nationality and culture set aside for an evening of fun. 

 

International Mineralogical Association (IMA '14) Day 2

Megan Becker reports on day 2 of IMA '14:

The process mineralogy and geometallurgy session of the conference continued today and started off with the keynote by Prof Eric Pirard from the University of Liege. Eric’s talk entitled “From Geometallurgy to Ecometallurgy: Building mines for the future” challenged us to use the macro, meso and micro-scale tools which have been developed in geometallurgy and apply this to ecometallurgy, where instead of process natural minerals, we are now faced with processing new synthetic minerals derived from recycling initiatives. The challenge is not only consider these from a material centric perspective (i.e. focusing only on the recovery of 1 metal  such as Al), but rather on the full cycle (i.e. focusing on the recovery of all valuable metals contained within electronic goods to recover some of the more critical metals: Ga, In, Ce, Y etc). 

The session finished off with a talk by Paul Linton from Geospectral Imaging who spoke on how the comminution properties of the ore have been successfully modelled using geometallurgical data at the Anglo Gold Ashanti La Ca Colosa project in Columbia. Paul continued this topic as a key note in another session devoted to hyperspectral imaging where he spoke of the practicalities of drilling and then obtaining core scanning data at La Colosa, a remote project within a forested mountainous area straddled between a fault zone and an active volcano! Overall it was a very inspiring talk and demonstrated how the use of core spectroscopy played a key role in mapping the mineralisation of the ore, yet not without a lot of perseverance from the geometallurgy team both onsite and off-site.

All authors who presented within the process mineralogy and geometallurgy session will be invited to submit the papers for review to the International Journal of Mineral Processing, where a special issue has been proposed and will be edited by Al Cropp of MinAssist (one of the sponsors of Process Mineralogy 14).

Sponsors of Process Mineralogy 14, Bruker: Lindsey Singh and Pari Antalis

Dr Luisa Ashworth (GeoSpectral Imaging), Paul Linton (Geospectral Imaging)
and Dr Lynnette Greyling (University of Cape Town)

 

Faces at AusIMM Mill Operators Day 2

Simon Meik

It's always good to see photos of mineral processing people on the blog- familiar and new faces and faces from the past- so I thank Jon for sending the photos below from Townsville. I was particularly pleased to see my old friend Dr. Simon Meik, Corporate Director of Processing at Dundee Precious Metals in Bulgaria.  Simon and I go back a long way, to the late 1970s when he led the team from AMAX, working at Camborne School of Mines on the feasibility study for the Hemerdon tungsten mine (see posting of 10 July 2014). He was also at that time heavyweight boxing champion of SW-England and I regularly trained (not competed!) with him in the CSM gym.


Anyway, here are Jon's photos and news of todays events at Mill Ops '14.


The second day is always a bit quieter and therefore easier to chat to people in the exhibition area. It was good to meet with the team at Kemtec Mineral Processing who specialise in the optimisation of collectors and frothers. Although this was a company I had not heard of, they informed me they had planned to attend Flotation ’13 but had not been able to get a booth as the exhibition had sold out. Hopefully they will therefore be at Flotation ’15 which has already sold 7 of the 24 available booths.

Kemtec Mineral Processing

  

The Magotteaux booth

Led by husband and wife team Sandy and Elizabeth Lewis-Gray, Gekko Systems has a particular interest in developing energy efficient, capital effective flowsheets, equipment, modular plant, and services for gold, coal and polymetallic operations.  Below, Gekko's Nigel Grigg talks to a couple of interested delegates.

Scantech are ever present at the Mill Ops conferences and pictured is Don Cook (left) with Doug McDonald of Alchemet.

The Australian arm of Eriez Magnetics with Liam Davis (centre) talking to delegates

The Clariant booth

Orica

Huntsman

Consep

The conference dinner was a great occasion- spectacular setting and a humorous speaker- Vince Sorrenti, apparently a well known Australian celebrity.

All set for tonight's conference dinner

 

International Mineralogical Association General Meeting, Day 1

MEI is represented at two major conferences this week, both of which started today. While Jon reports on Mill Ops '14 from Queensland, MEI's Process Mineralogy '14 consultant Dr. Megan Becker, of the University of Cape Town,  will be sending daily updates from Johannesburg, where the International Mineralogical Association General Meeting (IMA '14) is currently being held.

Megan reports on today's events:

One can consider this conference the “mineralogists” version of the IMPC: a large (800+ delegates), international conference (49 countries), with numerous scientific sessions (up to 10 parallel sessions), and of course something to interest everyone. This conference, the 1st of the IMA meetings to be held on the African continent, is organised by the Mineralogical Association of South Africa, in partnership with the Geological Society of South Africa: Dr Sabine Verryn (XRD Analytical and Consulting), Dr Craig Smith (GSSA), and Dr Desh Chetty (Mintek) being the key people who have worked long and hard over the past 4 years to make the conference a reality. 

Catching up at the welcome function: Prof Dee Bradshaw (University of Queensland), Dr Desh Chetty (Mintek),
Hanna Horsch (Hazen Research, USA), Dr Megan Becker (University of Cape Town)
and Dr Sabine Verryn (XRF Analytical and Consulting)

The theme of the conference “Delving Deeper: Minerals as Mines of Information” encapsulates the rich heritage of mineral resources within South Africa, but also talks to the very active community of mineralogists (many of whom practise process mineralogy) within South Africa. The Honourable Minister of Science and Technology in South Africa, Dr Naledi Pandor spoke at the opening ceremony on Sunday and reiterated the need for those of us associated with the mining industry to think about the impact of the sector on ALL aspects of the population and actively engage with the communities surrounding the mining industry: in other words practise sustainable mining. She spoke of the South African history in terms of the many migrant labourers who have been displaced from their families over decades of mining. These same migrant labourers developed the art of “gumboot” dancing as a means of expression – and of course we were lucky enough to be treated to some real gumboot dancing by a group of teenage boys one of the local high schools!  

Gumboot dancing demonstration at the opening ceremony: Part of South Africa’s cultural heritage

The scientific programme for the conference itself started off this Monday morning. I devoted my day to sitting in the session on process mineralogy and geometallurgy which started with a keynote by Dr Rob Schouwstra from Anglo American Technical Solutions. He spoke of their geometallurgy programme at Mogalakwena (their largest PGM operation in South Africa) emphasizing that its “not a quick fix”, and that the successful implementation of such a programme requires: a thorough understanding of the ore, determining what is currently measured, investigating whether suitable proxies be found to predict metallurgical response within existing measurement databases, minimising the use of jargon between disciplines, the importance of collaboration, growing the team, appropriate support from management, and of course plain perseverance. This does not happen overnight, and typically takes years to implement. Carlo Philander from Tronox also spoke of their geometallurgy programme at Namakwa Sands (a heavy minerals operation in South Africa) during the afternoon session, and again iterated that building a geometallurgical model is complex, but when tested, refined and implemented the gains can be very significant.

The day finished off with the plenary by MEI's Flotation '15 consultant Professor Dee Bradshaw from the University of Queensland on the “Valuable role of process mineralogy in the future of the mining industry”. This really was a fantastic and well received plenary - but given that she is going to present something similar at the IMPC next month in Chile, I’m not going to steal her thunder and write about it here.

All in all, a very exciting 1st day of the conference in what promises to be a great week.

AusIMM Mill Operators 2014 Day 1

Day 1 of the AusIMM's Mill Operators Conference in Townsville is now over, and Jon has sent this brief update of the day's events:

The 12th Mill Operators conference was opened this morning by Conference Chairman David Hunter of the AusIMM who welcomed approximately 375 delegates representing 19 countries to Townsville. There will be 50 speakers throughout the 3 days and there are also 38 exhibitors.

Tim Napier-Munn with fellow CEEC Directors Joe Pease
and Elizabeth Lewis-Gray

Geoff Sharrock, the President of the AusIMM then spoke about the organisation, which began 121 years ago and is still growing to this day. The theme of the latest conference in this series, which began in 1978, is “Achieving More with Less” and the opening keynote was given by Prof. Tim Napier-Munn, Director of CEEC, and was titled “Cunning Solutions to Process Improvement”. Tim joked in opening that it was good to see a conference with so few academics and that he was lucky to be allowed in, the balance though being a difficult one to get right, as we know from experience with MEI Conferences.

The coffee and lunch breaks are held in the pavilion housing the exhibition and here I was able to catch up with some previous MEI Conference exhibitors including Peter Wulff from Eirich who was with his Australian agents Ian and Claire Laws from Joest.

Peter Wulff (right) with Ian and Claire Laws

Shengyu Mao from Chemco was next to Eirich and I hope to see both companies at Comminution ’16.

One of the sponsors of Flotation ’15 is SNF Flomin and Kevin Botha is here with his team. Kevin will also be exhibiting at next years Flotation conference in Cape Town.



Kevin Botha with Michael Stoychevski and David Ho Wing

Vega Industries regularly attend MEI's Comminution conferences, and pictured here are Christian Delcour, Craig Norbury and Jeffrey Titus.

Lunch was a chance to relax and I think the spot with the best view was found by these four delegates:

After the final session, drinks and canapes were served in the exhibition area and I caught up with Sam Ayoub from Continental Engineering, a regular exhibitor at our Flotation series who has his booth booked for 2015 in Cape Town.

In the gardens I chatted with Tim Napier-Munn, Elizabeth Lewis-Gray and John Russell, a sponsor and exhibitor at Comminution ’14 who I hope to see again in 2016.