Two standout examples of research and field work to help lower the energy footprint of mineral processing have been awarded the highly respected CEEC Medal for 2020.

Attracting a record 23 nominations from across the globe, the shortlisted papers showcased exciting site improvements and innovative ideas for future technologies, the organisers said.

CEEC director and medal evaluation committee hair 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:

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.

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.

Dr Pokrajcic said the winning operations paper from Newmont/Metso documentes a successful miner/vendor collaboration on how to assess the comminution circuit options in a low energy and water environment.

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 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.