HOF Citations 2016 Comminution - Jo Pease and Bill Johnson

2016
IN ASSOCIATION WITH

COMMINUTION

SPONSORED BY

Joe Pease & Dr Bill Johnson
New technology doesn’t just come into
our industry. It is the combination of a
set of events, timing and people with
passion. If one of these ingredients is
missing then the technology doesn’t
eventuate. People with passion fill a
variety of roles in the technology
development. Initial inventors are the
source of the “spark”, that important
event that brings to light the innovation. As important
are the teams of engineers, operators and scientist
who work with the inventors to further develop the
idea into something that can be touched, be used
and mark the way to a commercial product. And
finally there are the first users to adopt the
technology – believers who take the risk of breaking
away from “tried and tested” routes, hoping to bring
to their project advantages that wasn’t possible in
the status quo.
Joe Pease
Joe Pease, former COO, Xstrata Technology has
been in the mining industry for over 30 years, in a
range of technical and managerial roles. A large part
of his career was at Glencore’s Mount Isa Mines
(MIM), and more specifically, in the lead/zinc
concentrator at that site. During this time, the “spark”
of using small scale industrial fine grinding into
mineral processing was initiated in the labs at MIM
to combat the company’s deteriorating ore quality,
which led to the birth of IsaMill™ comminution
technology.
However, to get to the point of a robust, commercial
technology, many steps were needed after the initial
spark, lab scale testwork and initial prototype
development. This is where Joe has played a vital
role in the IsaMill story. He knew the fine grained
orebodies at Mount Isa, as well as the deposits at
McArthur River, needed this technology for their
survival and development, and it needed to work.
No other technology could grind economically to
the sizes that were required to liberate the minerals.
Working with engineers, development teams and his
operators, Joe was a key player in the advance of
the technology at the Mount Isa operations, leading
to increased metal recoveries and developing the
IsaMill into the robust and accepted technology it
is today.
The original detailed flotation studies of the lead-zinc

ores at Mount Isa and McArthur River were carried
out by Dr Bill Johnson (see detailed section below)
and he defined the requirement for an ultrafine
grinding mill. The Netzsch company in Germany
worked with MIM to build the early mills and the
project became a commercial venture when they
were successful. The work has been excellent and
the results have been most satisfactory.
The turning around of zinc recovery at MIM and the
eventual development of McArthur River based on
IsaMill technology, is a credit to the work done by
Joe and the rest of the engineers and operators in
developing the new technology. Several papers
document the success at these operations,
Improving Fines Recovery by Grinding Finer and
Developments in Milling Practice at the Lead/Zinc
Concentrators of Mount Isa Mines Limited from
1990, co-authored by Joe and other engineers, with
Joe always keen to discuss with doubters of the new
technology and new concentrator practices – “You
can grind fine...and you can float fines!”
After Mount Isa, Joe joined Xstrata Technology (XT),
a subsidiary of Glencore Xstrata responsible for
marketing and further developing technology from its
operations. Joe has overseen IsaMill technology
develop from being a “niche” application used
mainly at Glencore Xstrata sites, to an accepted
grinding technology in coarser applications
worldwide. Through Joe and the IsaMill team at XT,
the passion to implement energy efficient
comminution technology in a variety of minerals and
duties is still as strong today as it was when the
technology was first developed, with over 120 mills
being installed, large mills and technology packages
being developed, as well as the promotion of user
groups for further advances in technology.
The roles Joe has played in being a joint developer
and first user of IsaMills, and his role in its
commercialisation, as well as a passionate leader
and motivator of the IsaMill business at XT, is why
he was nominated as a worthy candidate for the
International Mining Hall of Fame.
Joe in his own words: “My role at MIM was initially
as manager of the lead-zinc concentrator, where we
worked with Bill to develop and apply the IsaMill
from small scale, in several stages of scale up, to
the 1 MW scale used in our projects at Mount Isa
and McArthur River. After development to full scale,
I led the concentrator team to apply the technology