WARC Mini-seminar : Peter Apata Olubambi

Mr Olubambi during his presentation

As previously announced, the third in the series of WARC mini-seminars for researchers featured a presentation by WARC Travel Grant Awardee Peter Apata Olubambi of the Department of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria, and currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the School of Process & Materials Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Peter A. Olubambi spoke on "The Effectiveness of Biohydrometallurgy for Sustainable Development in the Minerals Industry".
The topic was discussed with specific reference to the Nigerian mining industry. The speaker started with an evaluation of the state of the Nigerian minerals industry, noticing that the mining industry in Nigeria has the potential to serve as a major foreign exchange earner with considerable multiplier effects and also as a source of raw materials feedstock for local industries. However, the mere existence of mineral deposits is not enough to justify the hope of exploitation and development of Nigerian solid minerals, but involves a number of considerations which include, among others, the cost of mining and processing and its impact on the environment. He then presented available processing and recovering routes and came to the conclusion that biohydrometallurgical approach is suitable and effective for processing the ore and can therefore be considered, applied and adopted to processing other ore deposits from Nigeria.
The session was chaired by Dr. Ibrahima Seck and the discussant was Professor Aboubakar Sedikh Bèye of University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) who substantially contributed to the scientific quality of the discussions as he is a specialist in the field. The seminar was attended by the WARC staff and associated researchers.

Dr Ibrahima Seck

Mr Olubambi with one part of the audience