Mineral Processing 101: General overview and technological advancements in minerals characterization.

Doctor Maria Holuszko

BASc from Technical University of Silesia, Poland, MASc and PhD degree in Mineral Processing from the University of British Columbia, NBK Institute of Mining Engineering, Vancouver, Canada. She is a Professional Engineer with Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia since 1993 and a member of Canadian Institute of Mining (CIM) since 1988. She is a Mineral Process engineer with twenty years of experience in Mineral and Coal Processing research.

Her career extends from working at the University of Alberta, the Alberta Research Council - Coal Department, British Columbia Ministry of Energy and Mines - Economic Geology Section to her research work at the University of British Columbia during the graduate years. Maria carried out a number of research and development projects on a laboratory and pilot plant scale during her career working for universities, government as well as carrying out consulting work for the industry. Maria has an extensive experience in flotation, agglomeration, pelletization and fine particles characterization methods which involve an assessment of surface properties of coal and sulphide minerals. Her interests are on the application of advanced technology to the mineral surface characterization such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray Diffraction Analysis (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) as well as Time of Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy and their industrial applications.

She spent a year (2007) working for the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre at the University of Queensland, Australia - world's centre of excellence for Mineral Processing. where she has gained familiarity with Mineral Liberation Analysis using JKTech MLA system for automated mineral characterization. She also worked on the implementation of Floatability Index into the JKSimFloat flotation model, as well as she carried out consulting work on flotation for BHP Nickel West, Australia. Presently, she is a Research Associates and Lecturer at NBK Institute of Mining Engineering, the University of British Columbia, teaching undergraduate courses in Process Mineralogy and Coal Preparation.

She has over 30 publications, many of them published in the proceedings of the international conferences and refereed journals such as Fuel Processing Technology; Liquid Fuels Technology; Coal Preparation Journal; Minerals Engineering Journal; International Journal of Environmental Issues in Minerals and Energy Industry;, Physicochemical Problems of Mineral Processing; B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Geological Fieldwork. Some of the publications such as "Washability characteristics of British Columbia coals"; B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources; Paper 1994-2 are the stand alone papers on the comprehensive research work she completed for the BC Ministry of Mines on assessment of coal washability. The other major contributions are: the co-authored papers: "Selected thermal coal basins of British Columbia"; B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources; Paper 1994-3 and "B.C. Coal Quality Survey"; B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources; Bulletin No. 96, 1996.

Maria and her family enjoy living in Vancouver, "the best place on earth", and she loves travelling, skiing and outdoor activities.