Recent advances in mineral processing plant design / Последние достижения в проектировании установок по переработке полезных ископаемых

In 1963 the Chairman of Metallurgical Engineering at Queen’s University of Kingston, Ontario, Canada encouraged me to apply for a position in his department. This led to an appointment as an Assistant Professor of Metallurgical Engineering with a mandate to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in Mineral Process Engineering. Graduating metallurgists take positions available to them in the mining industry and mill “metallurgists” were in strong demand. Discussions with industry-oriented colleagues at the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mines Branch) and with senior operators and plant design personnel at conferences such as the Conference of Metallurgists provided details of jobs available Canada-wide. This helped to fortify course content. At the undergraduate level, courses on principles of unit operations and processes were clearly necessary. A final year course on plant design would be a useful adjunct. Unfortunately, mineral processing plant design textbooks were not available. A graduate level course that dealt with Experimental Design, Plant Data Acquisition and Adjustment, Mathematical Modeling, Process Optimization and Computer Control had some relevance to plant design problems. However, a practical plant design textbook was lacking.

A plant design course should incorporate methodology to estimate major equipment costs and corresponding capital and operating costs. Hence, as an interim measure and with financial support from the Mines Branch, data were obtained from manufacturers and design firms. Acceptable costing techniques (for example, see American Association of Cost Engineers Handbook) were developed via statistical methods. A notebook entitled Mineral Processing Equipment Costs and Preliminary Capital Cost Estimations was written in 1970–71 and published by the CIM in 1972. It was updated three times over the years. The last version incorporated Mineral Project Evaluation Techniques. It is entitled CAPCOSTS and was released in early 1999 by the Canadian Mineral Processors of CIM. Unfortunately, this modest contribution did not resolve the issue, namely, that we did not have a textbook on plant design. <...>