The International Mining Technology Hall of Fame now has a virtual home – www.im-halloffame.com<http://www.im-halloffame.com/>. Once the voting has been completed the 2014 inductee in each category and honourable mentions (which will automatically be re-entered for possible induction in 2015) will be detailed on this new website. Where is your nomination? Two months to go. Nominations can be made directly through the Hall of Fame website. Current sponsors of the Hall of Fame are that great mining house Rio Tinto, mining contractor JS Redpath and drilling contractor Boart Longyear – more sponsorships are available, but they are limited in number. Get in now to secure the opportunity to sponsor again in 2014 – 2013 sponsors will be given first refusal – as this event grows and grows annually, and moves around the mining world.
To date, nominations include, in Comminution, Professor TC Rao from India. In Concentration, Professor Graeme Jameson of University of Newcastle, Australia, has been nominated more than once because he is “a true pioneer in innovative flotation research, and the inventor of the Jameson Cell.” Also nominated is Bartolome de Medina (1497-1585), inventor of the Patio process, the first successful application of chemistry to the extraction of metals. The process developed was used throughout the Americas, producing incalculable tonnages and wealth of silver until supplanted by cyanidation around 1900. In 1976 Byron Knelson tested the first crudely built fluid-bed prototype centrifugal concentrator at an aggregate plant in the Fraser Valley. Although the first unit lacked mechanical refinement of today’s carefully engineered units, the metallurgical performance of the unit set him on what would become an exciting and passionate 25 year journey that resulted in the commercialisation of what has become an icon in the mineral processing industry worldwide – the Knelson Concentrator.
In 1888, Edmund J. Longyear drilled the first diamond core hole in the Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota. Shortly afterward, he formed a contract diamond drilling company to serve the rapidly growing US iron ore mining and steel industry. Andy O’Brien and Andy Cecala nominated for Safety category. Together these two have worked on developing several new innovations including the dust booth and the helmet cam (& Evade software). Andy O’Brien is VP of Safety & Health for Unimin Corp based in Winchester, VA and Andy Cecala works with NIOSH out of Pittsburg. In Surface Mining, William Smith Otis, the inventor of the steam shovel, has been nominated, along with SmartCap inventor Dr Daniel Bongers and James White – founder of Modular Mining. For underground, nominations include Konrad Grebe for his invention of the plow for coal production in thin seams, Burt Royle, the principal inventor of the mucking machine, and Jacques Melkonian for his underground axle, widely used in Joy loaders and other machines. Bill Schultz was the Chief Engineer at Rocanville and was credited with the conversion of the Marietta Miners from cutting coal to potash.
