Sustainable Comminution: Giving Mining Clients What They Need, Expect and Deserve

Comminution circuits are historically one of the most difficult parts of a mineral processing plant to design with confidence. There is controversy in the industry as to how best to approach this subject, with many solutions requiring a level of training and expertise beyond the ability of a non-specialist engineer. This has led to a culture of experts who opine on the subject with little or no direct benefit to the design process or the plant operator. In order to change this, mineral industry owners and senior managers need to understand the fundamental challenges that a comminution circuit poses to the design process, to the operators who use the equipment, and to the owners who invest in a project. This presentation is intended to summarize these challenges and offer solutions which are clear, specific and in a format which is applicable to the mining and mineral engineering community.

John Starkey, BASc, P. Eng., FCIM
Principal Consulting Engineer and President, Starkey & Associates Inc.

John Starkey is a Mining Engineer from U of T with 15 years’ experience in mines and process plants, 15 years in process design. He has been a Licensed Consulting Engineer since November 2000. His career included work at Kam Kotia, Kidd Creek, and INCO mines and mills. He also worked at Kilborn for 12 years designing the Gays River lead zinc, East Kemptville tin and Quintette coal process plants.

He invented and co-developed the SPI and SAGDesign tests which are both widely used in industry today for the measurement of ore hardness for AG and SAG mill designs and geometallurgical modelling. John has presented thirty papers describing his work and progress in ore testing, and SAG mill design. He is a frequent lecturer globally at universities, teaching the fundamentals of AG/SAG grinding mill operation and design.

He has received the Art MacPherson Award in 2004, and the Fray Interantional Sustainability Award in 2016. His mission is to capture for clients, the rich benefits of autogenous and semi-autogenous grinding technology, and to help them find the most economical and profitable way to grind their ore.

Sponsored by the CIM Foundation