BRIAN PUTLAND

Managing Director | Principal Metallurgist Orway Mineral Consultants

Brian has over 30 years of experience in the minerals processing sector, specialising in comminution. He has a Bachelor of Science from Murdoch University and is a Fellow of the AUSIMM.

He is the Managing Director of Orway Mineral Consultants based in Australia and led the Company's expansion into North America, establishing an office in Toronto, Canada. Prior to his work as a consultant, Brian worked in the gold mining industry in Western Australia.

In his current position, he provides specialist consulting services in flowsheet design, process engineering, gold technologies and plant optimisation, in addition to his management duties.

Brian is also a founding director of OrwayIQ, delivering MillROC to clients around the globe and is a non-executive director of Lycopodium Minerals APAC.

Keynote presentation and synopsis:

Cyclones Don't Grind

In over 30 years of undertaking grinding circuit optimisations, several common problems have been encountered repeatedly. In this talk Brian discusses one of these common problems, the function and operation of the cyclone.

The cyclones in a grinding circuit play a critical role in classifying the product size particles. They are selected and configured to achieve a target grind size under optimal conditions for the project (pressure, water split, feed and overflow density). However, in operation, the grind size is more heavily influenced by ore properties, mill power draw, and feed tonnage as the cyclones obviously do not perform any grinding themselves.

The talk explores the role of the cyclone, best practice in cyclone control and the significant influence cyclone operation can have and circuit stability and overall grinding circuit performance. Misconceptions arising from optimising the classification process independently of the entire grinding system are also discussed as are a number of case studies illustrating the concepts.