Into 'Poldark Country' with Physical Separation '21 and IntegratedMinPro '21

This now postponed to June 2022

The wonderful stretch of coastline between Levant and Botallack on the Land's End Peninsula is not only an area of outstanding natural beauty, but it is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as this is the St. Just Mining Area, the region of Cornwall's submarine mines (MEI Blog 20 October 2014) where 19th century miners worked the copper and tin lodes under the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and over a mile out to sea. 

The area is also popular with fans of the BBC TV series 'Poldark' (MEI Blog 29th March 2015) as this was one of the main locations for filming the fictional story of the eponymous 18th century miner.

This is my favourite stretch of the Cornish coast and I am looking forward to showing it to delegates from Physical Separation '21 and Integration, Optimisation & Design of Mineral Processing Circuits (IntegratedMinPro '21) next June.

On the afternoon of Wednesday June 9th delegates and their accompanying guests will be served a Cornish Cream Tea, and I will give a short presentation on Cornish mining and its legacy, before we are coached the 35 miles to Levant, passing by the UK's most westerly major town, Penzance, the birthplace of Sir Humphry Davy. From here we enter the most remote area of England, the Penwith, or Land's End, Peninsula, only 6 miles wide at its narrowest section between Penzance on the south coast and St. Ives on the north.

Levant, one of Cornwall's richest and most famous copper and tin mines, 'The Mine Under the Sea', operated continuously for 110 years until its closure in 1930. It is particularly well known for the collapse of its man engine in 1919, which killed 31 miners, and we will begin our tour at the miners' changing room or 'dry' where the miners entered a tunnel leading to the man engine shaft. After a quick briefing on what happened on that fateful day we will walk the couple of hundred metres down to the cliffs and to the main shafts, now owned by the National Trust. 

From here, those not wishing to walk over the cliffs will be coached to Botallack, where they will meet up with the rest of the group who took the 15 minute walk to the iconic Crowns Engine houses, perched precariously on the cliff face.

Passing by the extensive remains of Botallack's tin dressing floors and the arsenic calciners and labyrinths, our tour ends at the ruins of the West Wheal Owles pumping engine house.

Buddles in the Botallack dressing floor

Arsenic labyrinths

Wheal Owles

Suitably dressed up, and with a little CGI, this might be recognisable to Poldark fans as the fictional Wheal Leisure.

Filming 'Poldark' at Wheal Owles

For those who have never visited this part of Cornwall, I am sure that this will be a memorable tour and one of the highlights of the conference programmes. If you would like to present papers at the events, there is a call for abstracts, which should be submitted by the end of December.

Updates are at:

#PhysicalSeparation21
#IntegratedMinPro21

Concern regarding undergraduate teaching of Mining Engineering in UK

Unfortunately Thursday's Cornish Mining Sundowner has had to be cancelled, due to new Coronavirus restrictions on size of gatherings.

As the majority of sundowner regulars have association with Camborne School of Mines (CSM), mainly as current and ex-students and staff, there would have been much talk of the very disturbing news regarding CSM's degree course in mining engineering, which has its origins back to 1888.

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by Metcelerate to prepare a short video on the crucial importance of mineral processing, for their international online course for young mineral processors. The video was also added to YouTube in the hope that it might inspire school leavers to take up a career in the minerals industry. Ironically on the same day news came that the University of Exeter had announced a plan to ‘pause’ recruitment to the BEng Mining Engineering programme at CSM for the 2021-22 academic year, but stressed that it hasn’t been scrapped, instead recruitment has been paused while it looks to reshape the opportunities to study mining and related topics. 

The University says that it will explore a range of options to allow undergraduates to study mining, possibly through other engineering programmes, and will continue to recruit to the geology and postgraduate mining programmes.

A University spokesperson said "we know this may cause concern for some colleagues and students, however our current undergraduates will be supported fully to complete their studies, and colleagues and stakeholders will have a range of opportunities to help shape future courses. There is a strong future for the study of mining at the University of Exeter.”

'Pausing' however suggests a euphemism for something more sinister, and among those expressing sadness at the news was Cornwall Councillor and Camborne School of Mines student Loveday Jenkin who described the move as “another proud Cornish community that is looking like it’s going to disappear”. 

Let's hope not, as CSM is the only university department in UK offering a degree in mining engineering, the course being accredited by the IOM3.

This announcement is particularly ironic as only a few days earlier there was news that the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in UK could be banned within a decade amid pressure from Conservative MPs to accelerate a transition to green vehicles. Ministers are expected to publish detailed plans soon to phase out the combustion engine in efforts to cut roadside pollution and greenhouse gases. A consultation began in February on bringing forward the deadline from 2040 to 2035 with the possibility of a faster transition if feasible.

There was no mention, as always, of where the extra raw materials would come from to affect this transition. In the posting of 21st July 2019 I suggested that zero carbon by 2050 was unattainable if all vehicles driven by fossil fuel were replaced by electric vehicles, as there simply would not be a sufficient supply of raw materials to satisfy the demand. Blocking young school leavers from training to be the mining and minerals engineers of the future can only exacerbate the situation.

The news is particularly galling as employability of CSM mining graduates at home and overseas has been excellent, no less than 15 of last year’s cohort being taken on by a single company.

In my short video I stressed that as we enter the 4th industrial revolution the demand for raw materials will increase and that mines would have to ramp up production and the mineral industry look to secondary sources and recycling, only achievable if we have an increased supply of trained mining and mineral processing engineers.

However in UK Engineering’s otherwise comprehensive website, there is no reference at all to Mining or Minerals Engineering, and a link to a quiz for students, to give them an overview of all engineering disciplines, has no reference to mining or quarrying and no hint comes up in the jobs list.

Many years ago when I worked in Zambia the majority of mineral processors had degrees in chemical engineering, but on the IChemE's website, the section on "what do Chemical Engineers do" has no mention of the minerals industry, despite the fact that in 2013 IChemE launched a new special interest group dedicated to mining and minerals!

This is all very worrying and I invite your views on what is a subject of crucial importance not only to the minerals industry, but to society in general.

@barrywills

Bill Whiten 1942-2020

Sad news from Australia of the death of Dr. Bill Whiten of the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC). Bill Whiten was indispensable to the JKMRC, the Alban Lynch - Bill Whiten partnership putting the JKMRC on the map and sustaining it for over 20 years. Bill and Alban complemented each other—Lynch, with his new concept for research, early grinding and cyclone modelling, and ability to engage with the industry, and Bill with his ability to apply rigorous mathematics to the models, the software skills to develop general purpose simulation packages and a rare ability to devise simple experiments which led to new process understanding (In Conversation with Alban Lynch). Just like Lynch, Whiten had a fierce work ethic and commitment to see the JKMRC succeed.

Some would argue, including countless students, that Bill’s greatest contribution was in his supervision and support of students for over 50 years. He never really retired from the centre and continued to mentor students as the 50th anniversary approached. A man of relatively few words, Bill Whiten had the habit of summing up a situation succinctly. He was the first port of call when people ran into inevitable maths and programming problems and a source of new ideas in research which spanned processing and mining, data analysis and new mathematical techniques.

The longest lasting JKMRC tradition is the Friday morning seminar. Whiten introduced seminars when the first new building was constructed in 1970. The seminar program has never faltered and Bill continued to attend if the topic was of interest to him.

Bill Whiten completed a Mathematics degree in 1963 at the University of Canterbury (NZ) and learnt computer programming as a side line to the set course. He then worked as a computer programmer in the University of Queensland’s Computer Centre. At the beginning of 1966 he joined what is now the JKMRC as a research assistant and completed a PhD in 1972 on ‘Simulation and Model Building for Mineral Processing’ after studying part time. This thesis among other things developed the now standard model of industrial crushers, and a systematic approach to model building that has become the basis for continuing work in improving and automating model building.

Bill published over 100 technical papers on a wide range of topics including process simulation, regression techniques, model building, and clustering techniques. He worked extensively in the development and application of specific process models for mineral processing applications. He supervised 18 PhD degrees and 9 Masters degrees related to mineral processing and model construction and assisted many more higher degree students at JKMRC.

Bill worked extensively with models of crushing and grinding equipment having developed theoretical relations that govern these models. His work with S.S. Narayanan determined the essential one parameter nature of the size distribution resulting from the breakage of individual brittle rock particles. The breakage tests resulting from this work are now a standard procedure in the design of comminution equipment. It has been shown in conjunction with Narayanan how the breakage tests can be used in the design of ball mills, with S.E. Awachie for the design of crushers, and with C. Leung for the design of autogenous mills. The application of this work is a major part of the operations of the JKMRC consulting division JKTech. The University of Utah has based their work on comminution partly on these methods.

A particular interest was making model building more efficient and effective. The particular case of interest is now known as ‘grey box’ modelling where some theory is known and experimental data is used to complete the model thus taking advantage of all the available information. This has a great many applications ranging from basically empirical modelling to validating models developed entirely from theory. This work started with the specification of model building steps and was automated in conjunction with T. Kojovic. 

Bill was an active participant in the annual Australian Mathematics in Industry Study Group (MISG) and he also spent three years as an active member of the academic board of the University of Queensland. In 1993 he shared the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy "Mineral Industry Operating Techniques Award" for development of the JKSimMet Metallurgical Simulation System. The citation reads ‘In recognition of the development of the JKSimMet metallurgical simulator system at the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre in the University of Queensland which has achieved worldwide acclaim and commercial acceptance’. In 2019 he was awarded a AUSIMM Professional Excellence Award.

Steve Morrell, Chris Bailey, Rob Morrison, Bill Whiten and Dave Wiseman,
the team which won an AusIMM Award in 1993 for the development of JKSimMet

Bill had battled with leukemia for two years, and passed away three days ago. Our thought are very much with his wife Agnes.

The Crucial Importance of Mineral Processing

A few weeks ago I was approached by Prof. Jan Cilliers, of Imperial College, UK, with a request to provide a short video on the importance of mineral processing to modern society. Jan is CFO of the Governance team for Metcelerate, the other members being Diana Drinkwater (CEO), Australia, Brian Flintoff (Consultant), Canada and Robert Seitz (Director) USA.

Metcelerate is a two year Professional Formation programme for mineral processing engineers. It is online and requires a few hours of learning each week.

I was pleased to comply with Jan's request to have my video included in the introduction to the programme as I have always felt that many universities, while providing a good grounding in the science and technology of mineral processing, cannot deliver the practical experience that allows graduates  to translate theoretical knowledge and skills in to professional practice, and nor do they highlight how crucial it is, and will be in the quest for a circular economy.

Having prepared a 10 minute PowerPoint video, it is now available for viewing on YouTube. If you feel that you can make use of this for educational purposes, I would greatly appreciate you doing so.

@barrywills

Prof. R Venugopal, 1955-2020

Very sad news in this morning from the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines) Dhanbad.

Prof. R Venugopal died yesterday as a result of a massive cardiac arrest. He was 65 years old. He was an eminent academician and teacher at the Fuel and Minerals Engineering Department at the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines) Dhanbad, India, where I first met him during my visit in 1989. We met again in 2012 at the IMPC in New Delhi.

R. Venugopal, 2nd left, Dhanbad 1989

With Amanda and me in New Delhi, 2012

Prof. Venugopal served at ISM for more than three decades on different roles and responsibilities including head of the department as well as Dean of Research. His students always admired him for his unique teaching skill and his friendly nature. His main research interest focussed on pelletisation and flotation. 

Prof. Venugopal had more than 100 publications in different technical journals and conference proceedings.  He also served as the President of the Indian Institute of Mineral Engineering, which is the only professional body in India to promote Mineral Engineering. He is survived by his wife and three daughters.

Recent Comments

There have been comments on the following postings since the last update:

Cornwall's Coast to Coast Mining Trail
Sad news of the death of popular mineral processor Dan Alexander
Peggy Fuerstenau 1932-2020
Alban Lynch is 90 years old on Saturday
The XXX International Mineral Processing Congress is cancelled
MEI Conferences 2019-2020
Digital transformation in mining plant operations
In conversation with Bill Johnson: stirred milling pioneer
New book: Bubble and Foam Chemistry
August staycations

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