2022 with MEI: a cautious approach to normality

This year will be remembered for many things; in UK the year of three Prime Ministers, the death of Queen Elizabeth II, civil unrest and a severe cost of living crisis. The terrible conflict between Russia and Ukraine rages on with no apparent end in sight, but looking on the bright side it has been a year in which we learned to live with Covid, after two awful years of lockdowns and social distancing, and cautiously approached a new era of normality.

UK hospital admissions plateaued by the middle of January, suggesting that the end of the pandemic might be in sight and travel restrictions eased with no Covid tests required before entering UK, so we were optimistic that travel might be on again and Jon was the first of the MEI team to venture overseas, with a trip to the USA.

Jon at Mount Batchelor, Oregon

His visit went well so I registered for the SME Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, my previous venture overseas being to the SME Meeting in Phoenix in February 2020.  So at the end of February I took the train from Truro to London, on the day on which Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. The following day, after taking a Covid-test at Heathrow, I at last boarded a plane again, bound for the USA.

The SME has to be applauded for putting on such a huge face to face meeting so soon after Covid restrictions. The giant exhibition opened for a couple of hours on the Sunday afternoon, giving us a chance to experience the 'new normal', as the SME had emailed all delegates to advise that wearing of face masks was mandatory and anyone not complying would be asked to leave the event. 

So when I made my first call, to the giant FLSmidth display all conversation was behind face coverings. 

But moving on I was surprised to see that most people had removed their face masks, and experience in UK had shown that enforcing face mask rules is almost impossible, so when I stopped off at further booths, there was not a face covering to be seen, nor was there for the rest of the week.

Barbara and I took a nostalgic trip to the north of England at the end of April, visiting our old town, Ashton-under-Lyne near Manchester, and then on to Liverpool.

1960s nostalgia in Liverpool

Then back to Cornwall to prepare for what I hope will be the last of our online conferences, Physical Separation '22, IntegratedMinPro '22 and Sustainable Minerals '22. Originally scheduled to be held in Falmouth we had to commit to online events months before due to the pandemic. Although they were successful, there was obviously a feeling that they were no real substitute for face to face events. 

Sustainable Minerals '22 was also the first online event anchored by Jon from Luxembourg. Jon and his family moved to this small European country in June, as Jon's partner, Dr Kathryn Hadler, formerly with Imperial College, London, and a regular at MEI's flotation and other conferences, had been appointed Director of the European Space Resources Innovation Centre at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology.

Due to their move to Luxembourg Jon and family missed Amanda's 50th birthday celebrations in July.

This year's International Mineral Processing Congress was scheduled for Melbourne, but due to the severe Covid restrictions in Australia, and particularly in Melbourne, it had to be postponed. However, the AusIMM, the IMPC and CSIRO have to be commended for taking a big gamble in organising a substitute, a regional event, the IMPC Asia Pacific 2022 conference, in Melbourne in August. It was a hybrid conference, so delegates had the option of attending personally or presenting and viewing presentations online, and there were 460 delegates, 277 opting to attend face to face. I was honoured to be invited to give a keynote lecture in person on the birth and evolution of Minerals Engineering journal, as my big decision this year was to retire as Editor-in-Chief after 35 years, and recommend to Elsevier that the journal would be in very safe hands under the leadership of Dr. Pablo Brito-Parada.

It was a surreal experience to be standing before a large audience of mineral processors for the first time in nearly 3 years and, after a succession of online conferences, to be able to relax over a few beers with fellow delegates.

Relaxing after the conference with Graeme Jameson, Lachlan Bartsch,
Martin Rudolph and Ron Goodman

A week after returning from Melbourne Barbara and I were off on another nostalgic trip, this time to Tanzania to retrace the route taken on our safari in northern Tanzania 51 years ago. It was a wonderful week in this magical part of Africa, but tiring, so a few days relaxing in Zanzibar was appreciated before the long journey back to Cornwall and to a nation mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

In the Serengeti's Seronera Valley

Zanzibar

In the first week of November Amanda and I flew to Sitges in Spain to team up with Jon for Process Mineralogy '22, our first, and very welcome, face to face conference in three years. It was great to catch up with old friends and to make new contacts during the relaxed social events. Unfortunately, due to surgery, Barbara could not be with us, but she thanks everyone who sent kind messages of support, and I am pleased to say that she is now fully recovered.

A couple of weeks after returning from Spain it was Amanda's turn to take the long haul to Australia, this time to Perth, for the International Biohydrometallurgy Symposium, which was held in hybrid format. Hosted by Australia’s National Science Research Agency and CSIRO, MEI was a media partner and it was good to see so many familiar faces in Amanda's daily reports, including our Biomining '23 consultants Prof. Sue Harrison and Dr. Chris Bryan.

Amanda with conference chairperson Dr. Anna Kaksonen
MEI Biomining '23 consultants Prof. Sue Harrison and Dr. Chris Bryan

It has been an interesting year with a cautious return to international travel but I am not sure that we can say that we are back to pre-pandemic normality. Realistically we are now in the era of the 'new normal', where for some time we will be nervously looking over our shoulders hoping that an as yet unknown virus is not lurking in the background or that a new strain of Covid will be back to bite us. But for now life must go on, and we now look forward with optimism to 2023 with our two major conferences, Comminution '23 and Flotation '23, in Cape Town, and, in between, Biomining '23 and Sustainable Minerals '23 in Falmouth.  In the meantime we wish you all a healthy and happy 2023.

@barrywills

Season's Greetings from MEI

Photo: Tony Clarke

On behalf of all of us at MEI, I would like to wish you all sincere best wishes for the holiday season and a peaceful and happy 2023. And a big thank you to all of you who have sent us Christmas greetings by email and post.

Now that we are travelling again we hope to see as many of you as possible next year and hope that you will stay in touch. We will, as always, endeavour to bring you all the latest news from the international world of mineral processing, via the blog, MEI Online, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Weibo.

Decarbonising pathways for cement and concrete: will innovation overcome industry resistance?

Portland cement (PC) production is the world’s largest emitter of CO2 at 8% of global emissions, equal to the global car fleet. Pressure from the community on the construction sector to decrease CO2 emissions results in green-washing from the industry, with no plan for radical change. Also, the prescriptive standards for construction materials and design codes based on PC act as a major obstacle to adopt low CO2 binders. 

We are proud to have at next year's Sustainable Minerals '23 Prof. Jannie Van Deventer, who was ranked #2 in the world in mining and metallurgy research (posting of 17 December 2020). With three doctorates in chemical engineering, mineral processing and business economics, Jannie has received several awards for his research and has been listed three times as one of Australia's most influential engineers. 

Prof. Van Deventer is CEO of Zeobond Pty Ltd and is an honorary professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, where he was Dean of Engineering until 2007. He has a track record of commercialising technology in cement and mineral processing, and by analysing the interplay between technical and commercial factors, especially regarding concrete durability, a pathway will be proposed in his keynote lecture in Falmouth for the adoption of new technology to decarbonise cement and concrete.

New technology, including electrically-enhanced supersonic shockwave reactors, will produce low CO2 cements and supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) from primary and secondary resources. Synthetic SCMs will create a new value chain by replacing the dwindling supplies of blast furnace slag and coal fly ash as the steel and energy sectors decarbonise.

We are very pleased to welcome Jannie back to Falmouth as a keynote speaker, his first time in Cornwall since SRCR 11.

Jannie (left) at the Chain Locker, Falmouth

and with Markus Reuter, Dean Eastbury, Kari Heiskanen and me
in one of Falmouth's many fine restaurants

#SustainableMinerals23

Christmas Cornish Mining Sundowner

Despite rail disruption and icy roads there was a good turn-out of around 25 at last night's ever popular Christmas sundowner at Tyacks Hotel in Camborne.

Christmas is always a time when departed friends are particularly missed, and this month our thoughts were particularly with the family of Tony Batchelor, who died in September and would certainly have been at the Tyacks sundowner. Tony had been at the heart of the geothermal industry for over 40 years both in the UK and internationally and was regarded as the ‘father of UK geothermal’ by many. There was some good news, however, as last month at the 9th UK Geothermal Symposium in London, Tony was given a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the industry, his passion, and his dedication, which was accepted on his behalf by his son James. Tony knew he was going to receive the award and he would have been delighted to discover that it contains cuttings from the deepest of the three Rosemanowes wells near Falmouth, that he was responsible for drilling in the 1980s.

And talking of drilling, the big news in UK mining this month is not from Cornwall, but from up country in Cumbria, where government approval has been granted for the first new UK coal mine in 30 years despite concern among Conservative MPs and experts about its climate impacts. The highly controversial mine will produce coking coal for steel production in the UK and across the world. Although the coal will not be used for power generation critics say the mine would undermine climate targets and the demand for coking coal is declining. However, supporters claim the mine will create jobs and reduce the need to import coal. British Steel, one of the country's remaining major steel producers, will not use the coal because of its high sulphur content, leaving only Tata Steel as a potential customer.

The fate of the West Cumbria Mining project had been hanging in the balance for two years after the local county council initially approved the mine in 2020 (see posting of 12 October 2020).

The next sundowner will be on Thursday January 19th, starting 5.30pm, at the County Arms, Truro. 

@barrywills

Comminution '23: a packed programme awaits delegates in Cape Town

We have had an amazing response to next April's Comminution '23, with a record number of abstracts submitted. The programme for the conference, which contains around 85 international presentations, in oral and poster presentations, is now available for viewing, and registration is now open.

The programme contains three keynote presentations from well known comminution specialists. Prof. Arno Kwade, Director of the Institute for Particle Technology at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, will present "Modelling and optimisation of wet and dry fine grinding processes" and Prof. Aubrey Mainza, of the University of Cape Town "High steel load in SAG mills and the implications on energy efficiency of this growing design trend." (see the posting of 3rd October for more information).

Prof. Malcolm Powell is one of the world's most well known comminution specialists. He has applied fundamental comminution research to design and process improvement on over 60 mines worldwide during 30 years at Mintek, University of Cape Town, and the JKMRC. He developed the comminution group at UCT into a world renowned leader in the field, now headed by Prof. Aubrey Mainza, MEI's comminution consultant.

His professional objective is to maximise resource utilisation  through significantly decreasing  the energy and environmental footprint. To this end he leads three R&D companies and contributes to University research. Prof. Powell collaborates extensively, with close compatriots on 5 continents and he is the founder of the Global Comminution Collaborative.

GCC members Malcolm Powell, Arno Kwade, Magnus Evertsson,
Aubrey Mainza, Marcelo Tavares and Hakan Benzer at Comminution '14

So who better than Malcolm to open Comminution '23 with a keynote presentation on "Taking ownership of our future: the case for cooperative research and technology development in the mining industry."

Although we have a packed technical programme over the four days of the conference, we have left plenty of time for networking, with long coffee and lunch breaks in the exhibition area, evening sundowners in the Vineyard Hotel gardens, and an informal dinner at the Gold Museum in the centre of Cape Town.

There is much to look forward to in MEI's first comminution conference back in Cape Town since Comminution '18.

#Comminution23

Tega Industries and Promet101, the latest Comminution '23 sponsors

Comminution '23 is now only 4 months away and we have now announced a very fine technical programme. There is much anticipation regarding the conference, the first comminution conference live in Cape Town since 2018, and we have very strong corporate support from 21 sponsors, the latest being Tega Industries Ltd and Promet101.

Current Comminution '23 sponsors

Tega Industries Ltd is an Indian multinational corporation with operations spanning across 16 countries and employing 1600 people worldwide, and was founded in 1976 in Kolkata. It will be the first time that the company has been involved with an MEI conference.

Tega’s primary end-user customers are mineral processing sites involved in gold and copper ore mining. The company is the second-largest producer of polymer-based mill liners that are used for grinding and sizing mineral ores.

In contrast to Tega, ProMet101 has been a prolific sponsor of many MEI Conferences in recent years, including numerous flotation events, including next year's Flotation '23, IntegratedMinPro22, Process Mineralogy '22 and Sustainable Minerals '22. Promet101 will also be sponsoring next year's Sustainable Minerals '23 in Falmouth.

Promet101 consulting supports its clients from the initial conceptual stages of projects, right through to ongoing support in plant debottlenecking and optimisation, focusing on understanding the fundamental mineralogy, metallurgical response of the mineral resources to be treated, subsequent development of suitable metallurgical test programs, detailed metallurgical analysis combined with decades of experience in the design and optimisation of real world minerals processing plant.

CEO and founder Stuart Saich said "So why does a small company like ours continue to support MEI? Well if you think carefully about it, how much effort is put into developing a technical paper? 100 or 200 hours per paper? Then what about the costs involved? By supporting MEI you are supporting a platform for the advancement of our own industry by willing individuals to advance the scientific knowledge of the very industry we belong to. What is the inherent intellectual value or investment into the knowledge base of each conference at which say 100 technical papers are presented? I would say $1-2 million a piece. And from that investment springs further value growth as ideas advance and commercialisation grows. Why do we invest in supporting MEI every year, because it makes absolute sense! It is not about me, it is about our industry!"

Stuart Saich with Jon Wills at Flotation '19

#Comminution23