The lecture is free to attend and open to all, but registration is required in advance.
To register via Eventbrite please click here
A pre-lecture reception with tea, coffee and cakes will be held in Room 301 within the Royal School of Mines from 16:45
Abstract
Around the world the grades of mined ore are dropping at the same time as the demand for metals increases. This poses significant economic and environmental challenges for the industry. The traditional method for recovering these metals is to grind them very fine and then separate them, often using froth flotation, before smelting the resultant concentrate. This results in approximately 6% of the world’s electricity production going into turning big rocks into little rocks.
An alternative, and increasing popular, method is heap leaching, which allows the metal to be directly extracted from the rock without the need for energy intensive fine grinding. This method works by piling the ore into massive heaps onto which a leaching solution is sprinkled, with the solution percolating through the bed, leaching out the metal as it proceeds. The disadvantages of this method are that it is slow and recovers substantially less of the metal than the more traditional approaches.
A better understanding of these processes together with improved methods for predicting their behaviour are key to improving their performance. In his inaugural address Prof Stephen Neethling will describe some of the range of advanced modelling, simulation and measurement techniques that he has applied to minerals processing, as well as how they are applied to real industrial problems.
Biography
Prof Stephen Neethling is originally from South Africa and did his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, graduating in 1995. It is also where he got his first taste of mining and minerals processing while working on a number of gold mines as part of GoldFields’ bursary and graduate program. He then moved to Manchester, gaining his PhD in the modelling of froth flotation from UMIST in 1999. After gaining his PhD he continued at UMIST/University of Manchester as a post-doc and then a Lecturer before relocating to the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College in 2005 as a Senior Lecturer, subsequently being promoted to Reader and then Professor. His work has always been very industrially focussed and he has carried out research and consulting projects for a number of major mining and mining equipment companies including Rio Tinto, Anglo American, Outotec, Weir and Imerys.