Journal Comment
A monthly publication devoted to scientific transactions and specialist technical topics is unlikely to be on the priority reading list of the majority of the mining and metallurgical community. But it is the ambition of the Publication's Committee to make the Journal of much wider interest to our general membership from technician trainees to mine managers to CEO's of our constituent companies. It is to entice general readership that some 1200 words of valuable space are devoted to the Journal Comment each month. This is intended to highlight some of the features and impact of the papers to excite and activate attention.
To entice this preliminary glance before confining the publication to the book shelf or even the wpb, the author has to call on a large measure of journalistic licence in style, titles and quotations. It is essential to be spicy, controversial and even provocative to separate it from the abbreviated authoritative but necessary scientific style of the bulk of the contents.
The Journal Comment aims to be an enticement to dig into some important feature of the papers in the issue. For this reason it has been decided to include it as a separate item on the Institutes Web Site. This might provoke those who enjoy twittering, blogging and googling to submit comment and criticism, all of which will be welcomed and responded to. At least it is proof that somebody has read it.
R.E. Robinson
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Created: Saturday, 01 February 2014 00:00
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Written by G Pattrick
South Africa has a rich resource in precious metals and other minerals and metals and has certainly used this to its benefit in the creation of great wealth and the provision of a substantial number of jobs for its citizens and those of neighbouring states. The question, though, is can more benefit be derived from this mineral wealth?
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Created: Wednesday, 01 January 2014 00:00
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Written by H Bartlett
In this edition of the Journal a selection of the papers given at the conference ‘Sampling and Analysis: Best Practice in African mining’, held in Johannesburg from 4–6 June 2013, is presented.
The main objective of the conference was for the companies that are involved in the African mineral industry to present the procedures that they use for sampling and analysis, from exploration through face sampling and grade control to their processing plants and the final products that are sent to market.
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Created: Sunday, 01 December 2013 00:00
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Written by RE Robinson
‘What have I done to achieve longevity? Woken up each morning and tried to remember not to wear my hearing aid in the bath Robert Morley, 1908–1992
The papers in this issue cover a variety of topics from a number of contributors with no common theme such as a conference topic. To provide some coherent interest, I have chosen a theme inspired by a review paper from Finland which can be related to almost all of the papers. This is ‘A review of real-time optimization in underground mining production’ by Z. Song et al. of the School of Engineering at Aalto University.
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Created: Friday, 01 November 2013 00:00
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Written by Q Campbell
Coal is big. Really big. In 2011 the industry earned R 87.8 billion from coal sales, including more than R50 billion from exports. According to the Preliminary Statistical Release P2041 Mining: Production and Sales, published by Statistics SA in July 2013, the value of coal sales represented 24.5 per cent of all mineral sales for the first quarter of 2013, with gold and PGMs following at 20.5 per cent and 20.8 per cent respectively. Yet fundamental research in coal, in South Africa at least, seems to be lagging. If one can take this Journal as a benchmark, it has, since 1991, published 1168 articles of which only 167 had the word ‘coal’ in the title – representing 14 per cent of the published research output. So where are all the coal researchers, and why are they not publishing?
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Created: Tuesday, 01 October 2013 00:00
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Written by JR Dixon
It is appropriate – at a time when wage negotiations are underway and productivity is under the spotlight – that the Journal discusses mine optimization.
Productivity is not a well-understood term in the mining industry and tends to be narrowly defined as units of production per worker. The papers presented here, though, offer a broader view – covering a whole range of productivity issues in the value chain from defining the orebody through to optimizing the logistics around getting the product to market.
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Created: Thursday, 01 August 2013 00:00
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Written by RE Robinson
‘What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is the difference we have made to the lives of others. That will determine the significance of the life we lead’. Nelson Mandela
The paper by M. Nyoka, D. Brazier, T. Courtney, and RA. Parry from Vereeniging Refractories, (Pty) Ltd, refers to andalusite as a key mineral resource. I am sure the staff of Vereeniging Refractories will join me in paying tribute to the staff of the Ore-Dressing and Mineralogy divisions of the Government Metallurgical Laboratory (now Mintek), Pieter Overbeek, Jack Levin, and Joe Liebenberg, in establishing, some 60 years ago, andalusite, sillimanite, and magnesite as high-quality and strategically important minerals.
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Created: Monday, 01 July 2013 00:00
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Written by C Rowan, B McKechnie
‘We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything’ Thomas Edison
The papers in this issue are from the 5th bi-annual conference in the series Diamonds—Source to Use, which covered the full spectrum of the diamond pipeline from exploration through to sales and marketing.
Almost 150 years after the first discovery of diamonds in southern Africa, the region’s diamond industry remains healthy and continues to surprise through its ability to reinvent itself and create new opportunities, at times from deposits regarded as having been less than interesting in the past.
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Created: Saturday, 01 June 2013 00:00
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Written by RE Robinson
‘An educated man or woman is someone who learns, first of all, to doubt. At 56, I can honestly say I am more convinced than ever that I know very little and have so much to learn.’
This issue of the Journal is not associated with any conference or prescribed topic. I had hoped it would provide a small window on the mining and metallurgical research efforts at our universities and other institutions. I was not disappointed.
There are two, much welcomed, papers from Iran and Egypt. From the University of the Witwatersrand Mining School, there were five excellent papers - those of Matthew Handley and Dick Stacey are monumental contributions which certainly provided me with a much better insight into the status and importance of rock mechanics, even though the extensive detail was at a speciality level beyond my comprehension. The Institute will hopefully make these contributions available as monographs for students and groups working on rock mechanics.
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Created: Wednesday, 01 May 2013 00:00
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Written by CT O’Connor
Overview:
This volume of the Journal focuses on minerals processing and extractive metallurgy research currently being carried out at the universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. This collection of current research presents an opportunity to reflect on the development of these research areas in the Western Cape over the past few decades. The minerals processing activities in the Western Cape go back to the 1970s, at which time impressive new facilities were constructed at the University of Stellenbosch (SU) where Nico Louw and John de Kock were establishing a strong minerals-related research activity. John had moved from UCT where he had begun a small but active research group focusing on coal processing.
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Created: Friday, 01 March 2013 00:00
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Written by RE Robinson
‘We are equipped as never before, And the question arises: What shall we do with our strength?’ 1953 Sir Robert Robinson, Nobel Laureate
The papers in this issue are from the 5th conference on Platinum: ‘A Catalyst for Change’.
The platinum industry has suffered a sequence of unfortunate events causing much concern about its future. These setbacks run fairly deep. The most serious is the crippling increase in electric power cost which, because of the heavy demand of the electric smelting furnace, has caused the cost of processing to move into the danger range relative to the prices obtained for the products. The gloom has been deepened by the carbon emissions tax announced in the latest budget.
