Introducing Sustainability Thinking into Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy course 2019

The University of Cape Town will be holding a 2 day course in the Introducing Sustainability Thinking into Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy course takes place on 18-19 November 2019 in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Globally, the mining industry is under tremendous pressure to improve its social, developmental, and environmental performance while still achieving the traditional balancing of production targets with cost control. While most mining and mineral processing companies have endorsed sustainability principles and objectives, mineral process engineers and design engineers remain with the challenges of developing mechanisms that will allow them to implement the changes either into their new plants or to retrofit them into existent operations. This calls for researchers and engineers to provide innovative solutions needed to address key sustainability issues, such as those related to minimal environmental impacts, reduced carbon footprint, social licence to operate and supply chain management among other things. This course covers different operations in mineral processing and extractive metallurgy with a focus on running sustainable mineral processing and extractive metallurgy operations. The course will run accompanied with a narrative on how achieving processes embedded in sustainability principles could see the mining and mineral processing industry which is often perceived to be linear, being run to advance principles of a circular economy.

 The course will be present by lecturers from Universities of Cape Town (South Africa), Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (Germany), Luleå University of Technology (Sweden), Central South University (China) and University of Stellenbosch (South Africa). The course will be given by fifteen presenters with internationally-leading expertise in their own speciality fields. The contents of the course will include: The role of physical and mineralogical characterisation of particles in achieving sustainability in mineral processing, Improving flotation and comminution efficiency, Energy efficiency in mineral processing, Mineral processing to improve sustainability and efficient use of water, Mineral processing technologies for mining 4.0, Current progress and industrial challenges in particle comminution and flotation.

The course will look at different operations in mineral processing and extractive metallurgy through the sustainability lens. Therefore this course will be of benefit to qualified practitioners and post graduate students who work in minerals beneficiation or extractive metallurgy. The course will also be useful as an overview program for those working in the minerals industry. We hope to meet you or your colleagues at the event in November.

Download the Course Brochure or for technical queries, please contact Dr Mehdi Safari

Visit the Introducing Sustainability Thinking course website for full details or to register