Projects and Achievements

Copper mill grinding mills”

Copper mill grinding mills

Principal Advisor Flowsheet Development

  • Actively led and provided expertise in the delivery over an 18-month period of ten Net Zero Pathways Options Studies for operating sites and three major expansion projects, to required standards. These enabled a better understanding of the attainability of corporate sustainability goals, and optimised operational decarbonisation project delivery pathways by maximising the expected decarbonisation impact while minimising the required capital spend.

  • Engaged extensively with senior leaders within each product group as well as internally, and developed the Net Zero Pathways program from a decarbonisation planning concept into an effective business management tool, including a technology demonstrator of the application to the Iron Ore Group value chain.

Principal Advisor Flowsheet Development

  • Led the team producing a trade-off study model which facilitated financial comparison of two different recovery flowsheets and enabled strong investment decisions to be made by the project team.

  • Provided expert flowsheet and engineering support to more than twenty project teams, which led to cost-optimal flowsheet and technology changes, successfully promoting the viability of these projects.

  • Granted patent for a novel flowsheet, and designed, manufactured, and supervised a pilot plant program for an innovative technology to recover organic contaminants from Bayer Liquor, which validated the design, successfully identifying all essential design parameters for the full-scale engineering and construction.

Principal Lead Organics and Silica

  • Granted patent for developing a novel flowsheet which enabled the recovery and sale of fine bauxite from the Andoom tailings facility, which enabled the opportunity to derive revenue from previous waste material.

  • Successfully co-ordinated the development of a consensus within all SMEs on how to use existing technologies to remove oxalate and silica from Bayer liquor, which led to robust business cases developed, underpinning research expenditure to the present day.

Principal Advisor Process Development

  • Generated flowsheets for more than ten projects that maximized business value to Rio Tinto, which facilitated effective due diligence reviews and both green and brownfields development opportunities.

  • Initiated, designed, and developed an order of magnitude level study into recovering rare earth elements at Rio Tinto operations, which incorporated both metallurgical/chemical test work and full engineering of a novel process and resulted in a technically proficient, economically viable option for senior management to consider for further development.

Manager Innovation

  • Conceived, designed, constructed, and operated test columns and a fill pilot plant for the uranium heap leach plant.

  • Generated conceptual flowsheet to recover valuable by-products from the current orebody.

  • Set up entire Innovation Team from scratch, including recruitment, training, and standard development.

Manager Processing

  • Processing Plant surpassed quality targets sustainably for the first time in over a decade of operations.

  • Identified and successfully addressed safety concerns around the construction and operation of the Tailings Storage Facility preventing multiple fatalities.

  • Identified and led the reorganisation of the Processing Department resulting in more effective control of standards, better and quicker communication, and faster and more effective decision making.

Consultant

  • Designed full plant to recover gold from waste rock dumps for local entrepreneur.

Plant Manager - Joel Gold Plant

  • Designed, constructed, commissioned, and operated a carbon-in-leach circuit to enhance refractory gold recovery.

  • Devised an implemented an improved metal accounting and apportioning system.

  • Improved throughput by 20% and gold recovery by 7% year-on-year compared to historical performance.

Plant Manager - West Float & Acid Plant, and East Gold Plant

  • Identified and rectified a major hydrodynamic issue with the tailing’s storage facility, where water was saturating the south-western corner with the potential to cause a catastrophic wall failure. I left the tailings storage facility in a safe condition, having passed its annual safety review.

  • Designed, constructed, commissioned, and operated a small by-product uranium recovery circuit, making use inter alia of innovative inclined-surface thickening techniques to decrease the overall operating cost of the operation.

  • Conceived, designed, constructed, commissioned, and successfully operated a tailings reclamation and gold recovery plant from scratch. This operation made use of several innovations, including a raft-mounted pumping operation for the tailing’s reclamation operation, and sodium cyanide injection prior to the overland pumps to make use of the enhanced pressure to drive gold recovery higher.

Plant Production Superintendent Mine
Metallurgical Superintendent General
Supervisor Senior Plant Metallurgist Plant Metallurgist

  • South Flotation & Backfill plant throughput upgrade by 25% - assisted with the design, and commissioned and operated the plant after upgrading.

  • Increase South Float plant gold recover through innovative flowsheet development.

  • South 9 gold plant upgrade (by 3x!) - commissioning metallurgist.

  • South 9 gold plant - designed and commissioned the carbon fines recovery and treatment plant, 100% effective from start-up.

  • West gold plant - conceived of, designed, constructed, commissioned, and operated a gold from carbon fines recovery plant with a payback of two months.

  • South Gold Plant - commissioning metallurgist on the filtration replacement (by carbon in pulp and carbon elution) project