IN APPRECIATION OF PROFESSOR JAN D. MILLER S CONTRIBUTION TO MINERAL PROCESSING ON FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF SCIENTIFIC WORK

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1 IN APPRECIATION OF PROFESSOR JAN D. MILLER S CONTRIBUTION TO MINERAL PROCESSING ON FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF SCIENTIFIC WORK Professor J. D. Miller has had a brilliant, rapidly advancing academic career, being a consequence of his scientific and organizational talent. What is typical for his professional activities is integrating fundamental, applied and technological research for the benefits of industry. This approach has brought him a great success in commercialization of technological solutions and new scientific equipment. Not without meaning here is the fact, that US universities are among the most autonomous ones in the world, where the autonomy facilitates good quality of research and applicability of research results. In such an atmosphere the well-known Professor J. D. Miller s international scientific school of mineral processing at the University of Utah was created. Professor Miller also has an exceptional talent for creative analysis of every stage of the technological process, from a chemical concept till massive commercial production. For many years he has been chairing a research team which, at the time of the greatest financial support, was composed of a few dozen people from numerous countries. This team has always had several of our fellow-citizens as its members. Professor Jan D. Miller was born on 7 April 1942 in Dubois, Pennsylvania. In 1964 he graduated from the Pennsylvania State University. In 1966 he defended his master thesis at the Colorado School of Mines, and three years later he was granted a doctoral degree at the same school. Professor Miller s whole professional career, however, was

2 366 linked with the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, where he started working as an Assistant Professor in Before coming to Salt Lake City Professor Miller spent four years working in industry, which undoubtedly helped him to gain a deeper appreciation of the role of scientific research applying in economy. As far back as in 1972, Professor J. D. Miller was promoted to the position of Associate Professor, and in 1978, at the age of 36 he was appointed as full professor. He first came to Poland to participate in the 13 th International Congress of Mineral Processing, which was held in Warsaw in Despite having research contacts and friends in several outstanding universities in southern Poland, he chose to particularly cooperate with the Gdansk University of Technology, the leading center of technological ideas at the Baltic Sea. Professor Miller has visited GUT on a number of occasions, presenting seminars and delivering lectures for doctoral students, giving professional advice and participating in international conferences organized in Poland. In recognition of Professor J. D. Miller s contributions to the world s scientific research and to the development of the Gdansk University of Technology he was awarded the honor of Honoris Causa Doctorate on 24 th May 2010 during the celebration of the 106 anniversary of GUT. Professor Miller focused his research on three major areas: surface chemistry, particles technology and processing of energy and mineral resources. Most publications, patents, grants and cooperation with the industry pertain to such fields as: surface and colloid chemistry flotation chemistry, surfactant adsorption as well as particle/particle and particle/bubble interactions dispersed systems technology with reference to mineral processing, fluid dynamics and energy production atomic force microscopy for surface imaging, surface force measurement and surfactant nanostructures FTIR spectroscopy micro-focus X-ray CT used for analysis of particulate systems and micro finite element analysis of porous structures. Professor Miller s research covers multidisciplinary topics. One example is in-situ characterization of surfactants and water structure on the mineral surface. That topic was carried out using novel experimental techniques such as oscillatory spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, FTIR internal reflectance spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations. Both atomic force microscopy for surface imaging and surface force measurements enabled advanced analysis of surfactant adsorption on interfacial surfaces. Using soft-contact imaging facilitated description of semi-micelle and micelle structures for selected mineral surfaces and for different surfactants. Finally, these results have been compared with the results obtained in molecular dynamics simulations.

3 Another interesting and breakthrough achievement of Professor Miller is related to studies of water soluble salts. His research team was the first to start working on measurement of surface load of water soluble salts, especially halides, by means of unbalanced electrophoresis. The aim of this works was to explain the load origin following the theory of hydratation of ion lattice, which has been developed by Professor Miller. Further research has demonstrated that water structure plays a significant role in the degree of wetting of salt surface. Only in salts, which are water structure makers, the salt surface is completely wet by its solution. This presumption has been confirmed by IR measurements and molecular dynamics simulation. Water structure breakers, however, are not well wet and are easily hydrophobized by means of adding surfactants. These research results have been employed in separation of sodium and potassium chloride using the flotation method in saline solution. One of Professor Miller s pioneering solutions referred to developing and using micro-tomography for three-dimensional, special imaging of multiphase particles, including packed bed particles. This method replaced the two-dimensional, incomplete imaging used so far and has been implemented in many sectors of industry. Nowadays the size, shape, and what is most important, the composition of packed particle beds can be imaged three-dimensionally with the resolution of one micrometer in only a few hours. This is an enormous advancement in mineral enrichment technology. The computer micro-tomography also enables imaging of a complex free space structure in particle beds or in metal and non-metal ores. A whole range of such new solutions has been commercialized and is a subject of license granted by the university. Another achievement, which has been implemented in industry, is an air-sparged hydrocyclone technology, which enables selective flotation of minerals in centrifugal fields. Similar approach can be used in environmental technologies for removing suspended solids from an aqueous phase, absorption of components from gas phase, eliminating VOC from contaminated water and effective air-sparging. The most widely employed method, being a derivative from the air-sparged hydrocyclone technology, is removal of suspended solids in a swirl flow from waste water (including colloidally dispersed suspensions). The method was commercialized by a Californian company, which sold over 100 installations purifying contaminated water. A unique characteristic of the air-sparged hydrocyclone is its high capacity, which is 100 times greater than the one of the standard flotation cells. Another achievement making a significant impact on industrial development was a technology of oil sand processing used for the purpose of obtaining bitumen and producing synthetic crude oil. Some of the up-to-date technologies being introduced for processing of oil sands have been based on research of Professor Miller s team at the University of Utah. Discovering the way a selected organic diluents are effective in bitumen separation at low temperatures enabled a significant energy savings and increased the process efficiency. Scientific research on mineral enrichment using flotation method has facilitated working out solutions, which have had a commercial impact: 367

4 368 obtaining gold from ore soda deposit processing processing of lean boxite ores obtaining fossil resins from coal phosphate flotation. With respect to obtaining fuels the most important scientific achievement has been made in developing new technology of dimethyl ether (DME) production. The technology has been employed in the process of coal gasification and the license sold a company from Australia. Even now a cleanly combusted DME is used as a fuel for diesel engines superseding diesel oil in an increasing number of countries. Moreover, biomass can be a substrate in DME production. Professor Miller s team has also developed a technology of producing jet fuels from lignine materials. With respect to the most recent years, Professor Miller and his group have sustained research on High Resolution X-ray Microtomography with significant contributions in software development at the fundamental level and new applications in different areas of technology including construction materials and chemical processing. Research in the area of surface chemistry has been expanded to include molecular dynamics simulation and sum frequency vibrational spectroscopy for the study of surface states including the study of interfacial water. Professor Miller is an author and coauthor of over 550 articles, he has delivered hundreds of invited lectures. He is also an author and coauthor of over 30 patents (three of which together with GUT s academics) and of nine monographs. Professor Miller prepared over 160 reports for the industry. He supervised 34 master theses and 50 doctoral dissertations. He has been entrusted with a range of important functions at universities, editorial boards of prestigious scientific journals, commercial organizations, government agencies and associations. The cooperation between the Gdansk University of Technology and University of Utah resulted in publishing over 80 joint articles, chapters in books and conference proceedings. At least 28 articles were published in periodicals from the Journal Citation Reports list. They best present the wide range of research topics and achievements resulting from mutual cooperation of both universities. Among numerous prestigious awards of Professor J. D. Miller I would like to point to the following: membership in the American Academy of Engineering position of a Distinguished Professor of Metallurgical Engineering (University of Utah, USA) award for outstanding teaching results, granted by the College of Mines and Earth Sciences, (University of Utah, USA) Distinguished Membership in the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (USA)

5 Honoris Causa Doctorates: University of Pretoria (Republic of South Africa) and Gdansk University of Technology (Poland) Honorary Professorships: Central South University, Changsha, Institute for Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, Yunnan Province and The School of Chemical Engineering, Qinghai University, Qinghai (China) Most Prolific Inventor Award, Technology Commercialization Award (University of Utah, USA) Milton E. Wadsworth Award from the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration SME (USA). Jan Hupka Gdańsk University of Technology ul. Narutowicza 11/ Gdańsk, Poland 369