A good start to my week in Melbourne

I arrived in a cool and wet Melbourne on Thursday evening after a seamless 21 hour flight via Kuala Lumpur via the excellent Malaysian Airlines. 

Travelling light helped, hand baggage only, to avoid the baggage chaos at Heathrow.

Thursday morning dawned bright and clear and I strolled along the bank of the Yarra River to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, one of the world's most famous and impressive Test Match venues.

The highlight of my first two days was a superb dinner last night at the Members Dining Room of the RAFV, the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria, City Club. I was the guest of Prof. John Ralston and his wife Ann. John served over 20 years on the Editorial Board of Minerals Engineering. 

John and Ann were born and raised in Melbourne and John talked very fondly of the late Olivia Newton-John, who attended the same school. The Ralstons moved back to their home city 6 months ago, after nearly 40 years in Adelaide.

John was initially Professor of Chemical Technology at the University of South Australia in Adelaide and in 1994 became the first Director of the Ian Wark Research Institute ('The Wark'), serving for 18 years. He is still.active in his field, and among his many interests he mentors students in China and Canada.

It was really good to talk to John and Ann last night and to be able to meet and congratulate the manager and chef of the restaurant, Hafez Shakira and Jelena Grujovic, which recently received the enormous accolade of the award of the top restaurant in Melbourne.  Praise indeed as this cosmopolitan city is internationally renowned for its fine dining.

A great start to the week. It's hard to believe that I will be on a plane again in 4 days time!

Hoping to see you at IMPC Asia-Pacific '22

Tomorrow I start the long journey from Falmouth to Heathrow and then on to Melbourne, Australia, for the IMPC Asia-Pacific '22 conference, where I will be presenting a keynote lecture on the birth and evolution of Minerals Engineering journal.

It will be my first face to face mineral processing conference in nearly 3 years, so I am greatly looking forward to making new contacts, and catching up with old friends who I have not seen for some time. I will be posting a short report on the event when I return, so if you will be there and have any news that you think may be of general interest, please do contact me. 

@barrywills     bwills@min-eng.com

#IMPC2022

Fernando Concha: 1937-2022

Sad news from Chile of the death of Prof. Fernando Concha, former director of the Center for Water Resources for Agriculture and Mining (CRHIAM) and Professor Emeritus of the University of Concepción.

Prof. Concha served as director of the Center between 2013 and 2018. He began his academic career in the then Department of Extractive Metallurgical Engineering in 1960, two years after obtaining the title of Chemical Civil Engineer from the University of Concepción. In 2016 he was awarded the honorary title of Professor Emeritus, the highest academic recognition of the university.

I met Prof. Concha only once, when he attended Solid-Liquid Separation '02 in Falmouth, and twelve years later he authored a book on Solid-Liquid Separation in the Minerals Industry. 

Prof. Concha (left) at Solid-Liquid Separation '02 in Falmouth

In 1998 he was awarded the prestigious Antoine Gaudin Award by the SME, for his work on hydrocyclones, and he played a part in the careers of two other Gaudin Award Winners, who I interviewed for MEI, Prof. Janusz Laskowski and Dr. Osvaldo Bascur.

We offer our condolences to Fernando's family, and invite those who knew him to leave your memories on this posting.

Flotation '23: first call for abstracts

Flotation has always been MEI's biggest conference. The 9th in the series, Flotation '19, was our last face to face event before the pandemic, and it was attended by 293 delegates from 33 countries. Flotation '21 was totally online and attracted 273 delegates over its 5 days.

We are now eagerly looking forward to being back in Cape Town next year for Flotation '23 at the beautiful Vineyard Hotel in the leafy suburb of Claremont, with the stunning view of Table Mountain.

The opening session at Flotation '19

Already the conference has attracted a large number of sponsors, including the latest, Metcelerate, a welcome new addition to the MEI fold.

Current Flotation '23 sponsors

As always there will be an associated exhibition, where delegates can mingle with the exhibitors during the coffee and lunch breaks and the welcome wine reception. If you would like to exhibit, you are advised to reserve booth space as early as possible, as space is already being snapped up.

Morning coffee break at the exhibition at Flotation '19

Networking has always been an important feature of MEI Conferences, and, as always, we will have long coffee and lunch breaks, evening sundowners, and an informal conference dinner at a nearby location.

Sundowner in the Vineyard gardens

There is now a first call for abstracts. If you would like to present a paper at the conference, please submit your abstract via the conference website by May 31st 2023. All presenters will be invited to submit papers for peer-review after the conference. These will be refereed, and, if accepted, published immediately in the first available regular issue of Minerals Engineering, and included in the Virtual Special Issue of the conference on ScienceDirect.

We look forward to seeing you in Cape Town next year.

#Flotation23

New book: Hydrometallurgy: 2nd edition

This revised, new edition, by Michael L. Free, of the University of Utah, USA,  retains its class-tested coverage of how metals behave in water while updating and expanding information about metals processing methods. The book further retains its emphasis on predicting and engineering the way metals are extracted from ore sources, separated from unwanted entities, recovered as metals, and purified using water based processing. 

The transformation of minerals to metals requires hydrometallurgical processing for nearly all of the nonferrous metals we use. This book elucidates the associated fundamentals and processing applications as well as related tools to assess processes and performance. The new edition further includes additional photographs, updated drawings, supplementary data, updated descriptive information, and new detail on rare earth elements processing as well as recycling and byproduct recovery of metals.

July update- political turmoil; Covid infections rise; and the Lionesses roar

 The 7th July brought to an end three of the most tumultuous days in the history of British politics, with the resignation of Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party. Following yet another bout of lies due to another Tory sleaze scandal, two of the Government's most senior ministers, the Chancellor and the Health Secretary, resigned within minutes of each other. The following day saw a flurry of resignations with nearly 60 Tory MPs quitting the government at senior and junior levels, but after clinging on like a leech it was obvious that Johnson's position was untenable and on Thursday July 7th he formally announced his resignation as party leader, while insisting he remain as Prime Minister until his successor has been appointed, within the next couple of months. His resignation brings to an end three years of probably the most divisive and controversial eras in British politics. 

Covid infections were rising again across the UK at the beginning of the month, an estimated 1 in 20 people in England having the virus by mid-month, rising to 1 in 17 by the end of the month, driven by two new fast-spreading sub-variants of Omicron. Cornwall's infection rate soared above the national average, and there was an unusually high number of cases in Falmouth, probably due to the crowds pouring in for the annual Sea Shanty Festival in mid-June.

A packed Chain Locker for the Sea Shanty Festival on June 18th 

A heatwave in the middle of the month, with devastating fires and a record high UK temperature of 40.3C, also brought tourists flocking into Cornwall and its beaches.

Falmouth's Gyllyngvase beach

Also in the middle of the month we held what we hope will be our last online conference, before going back to face to face events for Process Mineralogy '22 in Sitges in November. Sustainable Minerals '22 was a very low-key event compared with the same online event a year ago, suggesting that people are becoming tired of meeting on-screen and are yearning for the social interaction of conventional pre-pandemic events. It's hard to build relationships using Zoom and other online platforms, but it is now a feature of our lives after Jon's recent move to Luxembourg.

Granddaughter Josephine 'Zooming' from Luxembourg

Jon, Kathryn and family missed our big event of the year, Amanda's 50th birthday.

Another major event for me in July was the hand-over of my position as Editor-in-Chief of Minerals Engineering to my admirable successor Dr. Pablo Brito-Parada. I have been with the journal for 35 years, since I established it in 1987, and I am honoured to have been invited to Melbourne in a couple of week's time to present a keynote lecture on my time with Minerals Engineering at the IMPC Asia-Pacific conference. I am really looking forward to catching up with old friends after this long lay-off.

And finally something to cheer about at last in England. Four and a half hours ago the "Lionesses", the English team, beat Germany 2-1 in the final of  the Women's  UEFA Euro 2022 championship. The standard of football throughout the tournament has been exceptional and the team can feel immensely proud of their performance, the first time an English team has won a major football tournament since 1966 when the men's team beat Germany in the World Cup final.

Source: insidesport

@barrywills