Secretary’s Report for the Period of November 2009 to December 2010

The Secretary takes pleasure in presenting the report of the Institute for the period of November 2009 to December 2010. The present Executive Council (EC) was elected in the XXIV General Body (GB) Meeting held on 22nd April 2008 at Hotel Residency Tower, Trivandrum during the International Seminar on Mineral Processing Technology (MPT-2008).

During this period the Institute has made an all round progress. As decided in the EC meeting on 24th February, 2010 the XI International Seminar on Mineral Processing Technology i.e. MPT-2010 is being jointly organised by IIME, National Metallurgical Laboratory and Tata Steel at NML, Jamshedpur during December 15-17, 2010 as a part of NML’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. The event has evoked an excellent response and more than 240 papers have been received and a good number of delegates from abroad are expected to attend alongwith about 400 delegates from all over the country. The seminar is blessed with the messages from a number of dignitaries. The Institute would like to place on record the appreciation for sincere efforts made by the Organising Committee led by Dr. S. Srikanth and his team and colleagues from Tata Steel.

As you are aware IIME alongwith IIM will be organising the XXVI International Mineral Processing Congress (IMPC-2012) during September 24-28, 2012 in New Delhi. A joint meeting of IIM and IIME was held on 24th April 2010 to discuss the plans relating to organisation of IMPC-2012. It was also decided that organisation of an impressive technical exhibition with maximum participation from Indian industry, will be helpful in showcasing India’s strength in natural resources, research and consulting expertise and industrial products and processes.

On behalf of IIME and IIM, Dr. Pradip made presentation, towards hosting IMPC-2012, to the IMPC Council during IMPC-2010 held at Brisbane, Australia in September 2010. Many IIME members attended the council meeting and the congress. On this occasion IIME stall was put up and participants were invited for attending IMPC-2012. We all have to put our best effort to organise the event successfully and make it memorable.

As you know IIME had total five local chapters at Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Dhanbad, Jamshedpur and Nagpur and subsequently another three chapters namely Mumbai-Pune Chapter and Student Chapters at Dhanbad and Garividi were opened. All the chapters are professionally active and vibrant.
Our Garividi Student Chapter organised ‘Sponge Iron Conference’ on 24 January 2010. Further ‘Beneficiation Conference (BENCON) was organised by the chapter during July 16-17, 2010 which was well attended by participants from mineral industry.
Jamshedpur chapter organised lectures on modelling of cyclones and process modelling and computer application in mineral processing industry. Members from the chapters are involved in organising MPT-2010.

Bhubaneswar chapter alongwith IMMT is continuing the PG diploma course on ‘Mineral Processing’. The course organises intensive class lectures and industrial training for the participants.

Chennai, Dhanbad and Nagpur chapters have also been active and organised lectures on varied topics.

The Institute congratulates to all the office bearers of the local chapters and members for various activities organised by them and thank them for their co-operation.

The strength of the Institute has increased during the reporting period as given below :

October 2009 December 10, 2010

Life Member 825 870
Members 685 686
Corporate Member 08 08
Student Member 352 360

So during October 2009 to December 2010 we enrolled 45 new Life members, 01 members and 08 student members while by 10th December, 2010 our strength rose to 1916 alogwith 08 corporate members. We heartily welcome all the new members. We also request to all the members to keep us informed about change of their addresses.

We have observed that there are several annual members who have not paid their annual subscription. Such members are requested either to change to life membership or update their subscription.

The Executive Council met three times during the period to discuss issues pertaining to the activities of the institute and many important decisions were taken. Further meeting was held to review the progress of MPT-2010. Few important decisions taken by the EC are cited below :

• Opening of new chapters for expanding the activities of IIME
• Submission of annual audited accounts by the local chapters made mandatory
• Organisation of Technical Exhibition alongwith IMPC-2012 through TAFCON
• Offering subsidized registration fee to encourage participation of students particularly IIME Student Member
• Depending on availability of fund consideration by the Organising Committee, MPT for supporting participation of PG/ B.Tech Final year students in MPT seminars

This year it was decided to honour persons of eminence who were instrumental in establishing and guiding Mineral Processing facilities at different places and are well known for their outstanding contributions in the field of Mineral Engineering. We are happy to announce that we would be felicitating the following personalities :

Mr. K.S. Koppiker, Former Scientist & Head, Uranium & Rare Earths Extraction
Division, BARC, Mumbai

Dr. B.K. Sahu, Former Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, IIT Bombay, Mumbai

Mr. J.P. Srivastava, Former Dy. Director & Head, MNP Division, NML, Jamshedpur

Nominations were invited for different categories of IIME Awards and submitted to the members of Award committee for evaluation. As recommended by the Award Committee it is a pleasure for us to announce this year’s prestigious awards of IIME :

IIME Mineral Beneficiation : R&D/ Academic : Jointly to

Mr. K.K. Bhattacharyya, NML, Jamshedpur
&
Dr. B. Das, IMMT, Bhubaneswar

IIME Coal Beneficiation : R&D/ Academic :

Mr. P.S.R. Reddy, IMMT, Bhubaneswar

IIME Best Paper Published Awards

Every year IIME awards certificate and cash prize of Rs. one thousand only each for the best papers published in the areas of Characterisation, Beneficiation, Hydro-Elctro-Bioprocessing (Misra award) and Environmental Issues related to Mineral processing (Tamotia Award).

This year the expert panel recommended the paper titled “Prediction of separation performance of floatex-density separator for processing of fine coal particles by Avimanyu Das, Biswajit Sarkar and S.P. Mehrotra, published in International Journal of Mineral Processing, 91, 2009, 41-49 for the ‘IIME Best Paper Published’ award on Beneficiation.

The paper titled “Gold supported iron oxide – Hydroxide derived from iron ore tailings” authored by R. Sakthivel, B. Das, B. Satpati and B.K. Mishra, published in the Applied Surface Science, 255, 2009, pp. 6577- 6581 has been recommended for IIME Best Paper Published Award on Environment Issues Related to Mineral Processing.
Due to poor response awards under other categories have not been recommended by the Committee.
On behalf of the Institute we sincerely thank the members of ‘Award Committee’ and heartily congratulate all the awardees.

The account for the year 2009-10 was settled and audited. Every year income tax return is to be filed with Income Tax Department. But inspite of our repeated requests we are not getting audited statement of account from all the chapters. Once again Chapters are requested to yearly submit the chapter’s account by May 15 to take up filing of income tax return and to avoid unnecessary complications.

The audited statement of account of the Institute will be presented by the Treasurer, IIME.

The Secretary likes to express his sincere thanks to the President, EC members and other office bearers and the Members for their active support, help and guidance. Thank you.

Hony. Secretary, IIME