Mechanistic Comminution Modeling: A success story that has not yet ended

Marcelo has founded the Laboratório de Tecnologia Mineral at UFRJ in Brazil after having completed his PhD in the University of Utah under the supervision of Prof. R. Peter King. He has been mainly involved in modeling and simulation, with particular interest in particle breakage and mechanistic modeling of comminution for the last 25 years. He has supervised over 40 M.Sc. and Ph.D. students, is a founding member of the Global Comminution Collaborative (GCC) and has received a number of awards from the Brazilian Association of Mining and Metallurgy (ABM). He is currently member of the editorial board of Minerals, KONA Powder and Particle and Helyion.

Twenty five years ago the late Prof RP King presented a keynote talk at the XVIII IMPC in Sydney, titled “Comminution Research - A Success Story That Has Not Yet Ended”. Much has evolved since that presentation and we will analyze critically, in particular, the advances in modeling comminution using advanced approaches that rely on the Discrete Element Method. Advances in the area of mill and crusher modeling, as well as in describing single-particle breakage in DEM environment that have been made in the author´s group, will also be analyzed. The presentation will also highlight some of the pitfalls and challenges identified in this path, which has proven to be even more challenging than originally anticipated a quarter of a century ago.