JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Visionary research commentator, Dr RE (Robbie) Robinson, a chemical engineer with distinguished involvement in minerals beneficiation spanning more than 60 years and a passion for linking mining and agriculture, has died here at the age of 86.

Warm-hearted and good-natured Robinson, who was a long-standing commentator in the Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM) and also in Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly Online, refused to allow his major eyesight and hearing impediments to get in the way of sharing his invaluable technical insights with the people of South Africa, using print, the Internet and video to communicate his messages to the full.

Late last year Robinson’s health deteriorated rapidly, which led to his passing on January 21, primarily as a result of lung cancer.

But his messages live on, including:

• His plea for the current surfeit of highly trained but jobless mainly previously disadvantaged South African mining engineering university graduates to be directed towards spearheading a research revolution into the creation of mining clusters that use mine water to drip irrigate crops on slimes dams, with the sale of dumped mineral and metal elements as the economic underpin;

• His advocacy of selected blast mining (SBM), assisted by modern computer programming, to avoid the wasteful ongoing loss of precious metal during blasting and to ensure significantly higher gold and platinum recovery;

• His revelation that considerable volumes of cobalt are going to waste in acid mine drainage (AMD) at a time when cobalt's use in electric cars and microchips is increasing;

• His zero-cost plan for the now stricken Grootvlei gold mine, which could have given gainful agricultural employment to 7 000 squatter camp dwellers on Gauteng’s East Rand; and

• His call on the whole mining industry to invoke the cooperation of Mintek, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the Industrial Development Corporation, the Department of Mineral Resources, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Water Affairs (DWA) and the agricultural Industry to target South Africa as an affluent first world nation in this twenty-first century, through making full use of this country’s Aladdin’s Cave of platinum treasure, which he calculated could replicate gold’s successes of the previous century.

After many years of executive duty for Sentrachem, in 1996 Robinson established a private company called AC Mining & Consulting, which was invited by Grootvlei gold mine to make proposals for treating the mine’s severe AMD problem.

This involved moving away from the failed process of putting large quantities of lime into the AMD, precipitating it and allowing the overflow to go into the local Blesbokspruit.

He formed an association with a company specialising in ion exchange and engaged previously disadvantaged technikon students to develop a new process that made use of an ion-exchange resin, which removed the ferric oxide and the acid and was easily regenerated by eluting it with ammonia and producing ammonium sulphate for fertiliser.

The red ferric oxide was very saleable along with nigh nuclear-grade uranium as well as cobalt, copper and nickel oxides.

What is more, the virtually distilled water was earmarked for agricultural irrigation.

Taking all this into account, the Grootvlei gold mine would have been put in a position to treat its AMD at zero cost, with Robinson’s innovative new process opening up agricultural pursuits to the people of the nearby informal settlement.

However, the DWA broke Robinson’s heart when it opted instead for a R10-million alternative that fell flat, had to be discontinued and probably contributed to Grootvlei’s demise, along with the subsequent ignominious Aurora liquidation debacle.

Instead of the valuable elements of old slimes dams being dissolved every time it rains and allowed to run into streams, Robinson continued to promote the concept of mining operations being allied with the provision of agricultural income for the families of mineworkers, through the growing on slimes dams of drip-irrigated crops like grain sorghum, maize and even New Zealand ryegrass, which produces more milk per hectare than any other crop known.

Robinson’s strong promotion of SMB stemmed from his long association with trying to improve the mine call factor (MCF) – that is, the matching of the volume of the precious metal in the ground with the actual volume of precious metal refined.

His consciousness of the MCF was intensified by his deep involvement with the investigation of gold losses going back to the mid-1950s, when it was a legal requirement for the MCF to be reported monthly to the police through the government mining engineer in order to combat theft of gold from the operating plants.

Born in Bloemfontein on November 6, 1929, Robinson’s early brilliance won him a scholarship to St John’s College, which was followed by an outstanding performance at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was appointed as an honorary professor of chemical metallurgy in 1969.

He served as a director of the Government Metallurgical Laboratory from 1961 to 1966 and was director-general of the National Institute for Metallurgy (NIM) from 1966 to 1976.

It was under his direction that the Mintek logo was designed and NIM moved from Yale road, Milner Park, to the current Mintek site in Randburg.

He was chairperson of the organising committee of the first International Congress on Ferro-alloys (Infracon) and established what is now the International Committee on Ferro-Alloys, in partnership with Mintek, SAIMM and the Ferro-Alloy Producers' Association.

To date, 14 Infacons have been held in 12 different countries, with the next event – Infacon XV – scheduled to be held in South Africa for the fourth time in 2018.

Robinson, who served as president of the SAIMM in 1975-1976, was awarded an honorary life fellowship of the organisation in 1980 and won its highest Brigadier Stokes Memorial Award in 1985.

He is survived by his wife, Diane, children Michael in Melbourne, Andrew and Chris in Sydney and Jenny in Vancouver, and grandchildren Nicholas, Scott and Jeremy in Melbourne, Laura and Katie in Johannesburg and Claire, Nicole and William in Sydney.

A celebration of Robinson’s life will be held at 10:00 on Saturday, January 30, in the hall at St Georges Village, Economides avenue, Bedfordview. The family has requested that donations in lieu of flowers should go to an educational cause or to the East Rand Hospice http://hospiceeastrand.co.za/donations/