Two standout research and field work contributions that have the potential to improve environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance across industry have been awarded the highly respected CEEC Medal for 2020.
Attracting a record 23 high quality nominations from across the globe, the shortlisted Operations and Technical Research papers showcased exciting site improvements and innovative ideas for future technologies.
CEEC Director and Medal Evaluation Committee Chair Dr Zeljka Pokrajcic said this year’s nominations reflected industry trends to install renewables, consider embodied energy and emissions, and the continued embracing of technologies such as pre-concentration and coarse flotation.
“It’s rewarding to see how industry leaders and experts are collaborating to forge improvements that make good business sense and proactively improve efficiency,” Dr Pokrajcic said.
Now in its ninth year, the CEEC Medal recognises the best published papers that raise awareness of comminution research findings, alternative comminution strategies and installed outcomes.
The 2020 recipients are:
Operations: Peter Lind and Kevin Murray of Newmont and Alan Boylston and Isaias Arce of Metso, for their paper titled “Reducing Energy and Water Consumption through Alternative Comminution Circuits”. This was presented at the 7th SAG Conference in Vancouver, Canada, in 2019.
Technical Research: Dr Grant Ballantyne, for his paper titled “Quantifying the Additional Energy Consumed by Ancillary Equipment and Embodied in Grinding Media in Comminution Circuits”. This was also presented at the 7th SAG Conference in Vancouver.
Dr Pokrajcic said the winning Operations paper from Newmont/Metso documents a successful miner/vendor collaboration on how to assess the comminution circuit options in a low energy and water environment.
The paper considers a typical case of a low grade, bulk tonnage copper-gold orebody in an arid climate (Chile, South America) with significant energy costs. It brings together important solutions – including energy-efficient comminution, ancillary equipment, preconcentration and flotation – and presents compelling economic comparisons.
CEEC CEO Alison Keogh said the global knowledge sharing offers real value for decision-making across the globe.
“The paper’s practical, systematic technology approach, which incorporates all-important financial analysis, has the potential to accelerate industry’s progress to deliver lower footprint minerals,” Ms Keogh said.
The paper’s co-authors Peter Lind and Alan Boylston explained that the work was the result of collaboration between many innovative thinkers, with ideas and approaches built over many years.
“We wanted to make a difference, to bring technologies together to show that you can save energy, save water and save money as well,” they said.
The CEEC Medal Evaluation Committee praised the winning Technical Research paper from Dr Grant Ballantyne as being “an impressive approach to capturing and quantifying energy consumption of ancillary equipment and energy used to manufacture and transport grinding media”.
The paper shares insights on embodied energy using data collected from sites, and presents results on the CEEC Energy Curves.
“The research presents a broader approach that considers the impacts of not just energy used in particle breakage but also embodied energy in the manufacture and transport of grinding media, and energy used in the operation of ancillary equipment such as conveyors and pumps,” Dr Pokrajcic said.
“Bringing this spotlight to embodied energy has strategic value. Many companies are including investigation of supply chain in their procurement decisions.”
Dr Ballantyne, previously a senior research fellow at the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) and now with Ausenco, noted that his work started in 2012, building on earlier concepts shared by industry at a CEEC workshop in Australia. These concepts were developed further following industry input at the 2015 SAG Conference in Canada.
“New research ideas and collaboration with industry are key to industry innovation.”
He said support and mentoring from suppliers as well as experts ensured the new ideas could be published for industry to progress thinking.
