February summary: Winter vacations prior to the serious stuff

Barbara and I were still with Jon and family in Luxembourg in the first week of the month. It’s such a small country that half day excursions can be made into Belgium, France and Germany. On our final weekend we crossed the border for lunch in Germany’s oldest city, Trier, in the Moselle wine region. The city core centres around the magnificent medieval Hauptmarkt, the plaza encircled by well preserved townhouses overlooked by the tower of St. Gangolf’s church.

Trier was originally a Roman metropolis, after their arrival in 17 BC, and a large number of Roman monuments can be seen, including the majestic 2nd century Porta Nigra gate, the largest Roman city gate north of the Alps.

While we were in Luxembourg, Amanda and Richard spent a week in Upper Egypt, exploring the region around Luxor and Aswan. This is one of the most fascinating places on earth (posting of 23 April 2020) and it was great to see Richard immersing himself in the culture.

A few days after we returned to the UK Jon and family left Luxembourg for a week in the French Alps, the children's first skiing holiday. 

Makes me very envious; a pity that I had to give this up a few years ago due to wear and tear on the knees, which certainly would not have stood up to the terrain in the photo below, which Jon described as a tough black run (aka formidable to we ordinary mortals).

And then we were all back at our desks, preparing for the serious stuff, not the least 4 upcoming MEI Conference this year. The programme for Comminution '23 is more or less finalised, and registrations are coming in. We will be on our way to Cape Town in six weeks time. We will be back there again in November for Flotation '23 which is also shaping up to be a major event, and in between we have Biomining '23 and Sustainable Minerals '23 in Falmouth, each with full programmes, which will be announced shortly. These will be held at Falmouth's National Maritime Museum, so it was good of the Prince and Princess of Wales to call in during the month to check it all out for us.

Photo: PA Images

Before all that, however, I was in Denver earlier in the week for my 20th Annual SME event and will be reporting on this next week. 

I travelled to Denver on the 24th, exactly a year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The war continues unabated, a terrible humanitarian catastrophe, as was the massive double-earthquake which struck Turkey and Syria early in the month. With over 44,000 dead, it's hard to imagine what the people in these countries are suffering and our thoughts go out to all of them. And also to the heroic rescue teams, showing the best of humanity amidst the worst of nature.

@barrywills

Sunday in Denver

 I arrived in Denver yesterday afternoon and due to the 7 hours time difference I was up and about early this morning, walking the short distance from the Curtis Hotel to the Convention Centre to register early.

As always I met up for coffee with Rob Dunne, who was on the Editorial Board of Minerals Engineering on its inception 35 years ago. Rob is now a semi-retired consultant in Perth, Australia and is passionate about mentoring young people in our industry, something which he is much involved with at Curtin University. Rob is involved with the SME’s Mineral Processing Division’s Awards Committee and is also involved with next year’s International Mineral Processing Congress, which will be held in Washington DC and organised by SME. 

I then spent a few hours strolling along 16th Street, to the Capitol Building and on the way back spotting Daniel Gleeson and Phil Playle of International Mining enjoying the 16C weather on the 16th Street Mall.

Daniel and Phil enjoying the balmy weather 

After a quick lunch it was back to the hotel ready for the late afternoon exhibition opening. I will publish my report on the event early next week.

#MINEXCHANGE2023

Kemtec Africa, the latest sponsor of Flotation '23

In 2017 we were pleased to announce that Kemtec, a new Australian company, supplying specialty flotation reagents to tackle plant challenges, was to sponsor Flotation '17 in Cape Town. Two years later we welcomed the young company back as a sponsor of Flotation '19.

The company has grown since then and is now a global group of specialised mineral processing reagent companies, located in USA, Australia, Mexico and China, with Kemtec Africa servicing the African continent.  In 2021 we welcomed Kemtec Africa as a sponsor of Flotation '21, which due to Covid was an online conference, and now we welcome the company to November's Flotation '23 in Cape Town, which will be our first face to face conference in the flotation series in 4 years.

Current sponsors

We are currently calling for abstracts for the conference, which should be submitted via the online portal by the end of May.

#Flotation23

Technology Metals for a Green Future: The Role of Biomining

Current global efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions is leading to increased mining of ‘Technology Metals’. These are the metals needed for ‘green’ technologies such as battery-powered electric vehicles, solar photovoltaics and wind power generation. Examples include cobalt, lithium, rare earth elements, tin, copper and tungsten. Although their current annual global production is not large (~100-100000 T) demand is increasing significantly. 

This rapid increase in demand is in turn driving a need for sustainable mining practices to exploit them profitably while protecting ecosystems and human rights and health. Biomining is such a practice, and is well-established for extraction of metals such as copper. At MEI's Biomining '23 in Falmouth in June, Prof. Karen Hudson-Edwards will review biomining of copper and other technology metals, highlighting research in the NEMO (Near-zero-waste recycling of low-grade sulfidic mining waste for critical-metals, mineral and construction raw-material production in a circular economy) and Met4Tech (Interdisciplinary circular economy centre for technology metals) projects.

Karen is Professor in Sustainable Mining at the Camborne School of Mines and Environment and Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter, UK.  She is an environmental geochemist and mineralogist working in the fields of mine waste characterisation and remediation, sustainable resource extraction (including biomining), mining and circular economy. She has published over 125 peer-reviewed papers in these areas  with colleagues in microbiology, geomorphology, engineering, business and social science. 

She was the 2012/3 Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland’s Hallimond Lecturer, the 2016 Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy New Zealand's Visiting Lecturer and the 2019 European Association of Geochemistry’s Distinguished Lecturer.  Karen was recently named among the top 100 most inspiring women in mining, being chosen for inclusion in the 2022 ‘100 Global Inspirational Women in Mining’ publication. This book, published biennially, highlights the wealth of female talent within the global mining industry and celebrates 100 women from around the world who go “above and beyond” and contribute so much to the industry and, as a result, are role models for everyone. 

#Biomining23

February sundowner: news of lithium and of the passing of a larger than life man of mining

Last night's Cornish Mining Sundowner was held at the County Arms Hotel Truro, with an attendance of about twenty.

We regularly have geologists and metallurgists from Cornish Lithium at the sundowners, as their lithium from brine operation is based locally in west Cornwall. They are also developing lithium extraction from mica in granite in the china clay area of east Cornwall near St. Austell, as is the nearby company British Lithium Ltd. It was good to have British Lithium represented at the sundowner last night by their hydrometallurgy manager Katia Omelchuk, who brought along some of her friends, some former British Lithium employees.

Katia (centre) and friends

British Lithium is focused on sustainable, chemical-free, processing and an entirely novel approach to the commercial production of battery-grade lithium carbonate from mica and is planning to produce 21,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate each year from its single quarrying and refining site.

The latest results indicate that the company’s unique process of sustainably extracting lithium from ores without using acids or other corrosive chemicals, called Li-Sep, is consistently achieving a recovery rate of more than 90%. The high recovery rate is allowing the company to go on to produce a lithium carbonate grading better than 99.9% purity.

The company is currently ramping up from pilot-scale operations towards full-scale production. “For the past few months, we have been focusing on the maximisation of lithium recovery in the calcination and leaching stages. We are very pleased to announce that the results are very positive. By the end of this year, we hope to generate enough data to complete our pre-feasibility study. There is huge global demand for lithium and the UK needs to have its own domestic supply" said Katia.

Many of the sundowner regulars were at the Mawnan Old Church, near Falmouth, five days ago for the funeral of one of Cornish mining's larger than life characters, Malcolm Hooper, who died at the age of 81. Although a few years older than me I always referred to him as one of my students, as he was in my mineral processing class for a module on the Camborne School of Mines MSc Mining course, from which he graduated in 1988. He then travelled the world as a mining consultant, but attended the Cornish sundowners regularly until the onset of his long illness a few years ago.

Malcolm (left) with Barbara Wills and Bentley Orchard at the October 2015 sundowner

A true polymath, among his many accomplishments he was an expert skier and we learned a lot from him when he joined the CSM ski trip to Meribel, France, in 1994.

Malcolm with me and Amanda, off-piste in France, 1994

The sundowner returns to Falmouth next month, so if you are in the area please call in and see us at the Chain Locker on Thursday March 16th from 5.30pm.

@barrywills

Nesch Mintec, an exciting new sponsor for Flotation '23

It is always good to welcome new companies to MEI Conferences, and none more so than Nesch Mintec Tanzania Ltd, a privately owned company registered in Tanzania, who will be sponsoring Flotation '23 in Cape Town in November.

Nesch Mintek  was formed mainly to offer Laboratory Analytical Services and Consultancy in Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy to the mining sector of Tanzania, East Africa and beyond. 

Mining has become one of the fast-growing industries in Tanzania which also contributes much to the economy of the country. Due to this rapid growth Nesch Mintech was started to ease some of the challenges which small to large scale miners are facing in Tanzania. These miners had little knowledge on how to start, operate and to troubleshoot some of the challenges in their mineral processing activities, which had a great impact on the growth of the mining industry.

We look forward to meeting their team, who will be exhibiting in Cape Town, and to discover more of their activities in East Africa. The company joins the growing group of companies who are sponsoring Flotation '23.

#Flotation23