Home / Scientific Groups / Comminution and Classification

Working Party on Comminution and Classification

 
Welcome to the website of the EFCE Working Party on Comminution and Classification.
 

Current activites

 

Excellence Award in Comminution and Classification

The call for nominations for the new EFCE Excellence Award in Comminution and Classification will open again in autumn 2023.
The Award is generously sponsored by NETZSCH Grinding & Dispersing.

 


European Symposium on Comminution and Classification - ESCC

 

One of the tasks of the Working Party on Comminution and Classification has been to organise the series European Symposium on Comminution and Classification. The first in the series was organised in Frankfurt a. M. in 1962. Since then an European Symposium on Comminution and Classification has been organised regularly.

ESCC brings together individuals from industry and academia who are interested in comminution and classification applications. The symposium offers a platform for contacts between different fields from pharmaceuticals through food processing to heavier applications in mineral processing. Furthermore, the symposium has a strong post-graduate thrust providing research students with the opportunity to present their research to colleagues. 

SAVE the DATE!
ESCC2024

The Hungarian Chemical Society and the University of Miskolc are pleased to organise the 18th ESCC on behalf of the EFCE Working Party Comminution and Classification. This 18th ESCC will further broaden the traditional scope of ESCC conferences of fundamentals of breakage, advanced modelling of fine- and coarse comminution and classification processes and applications for various industries, i.e. mineral processing, bio-refinery, food, pharmaceutical, chemical, electronic and materials industries with waste recycling and with mechanochemical-mechanofusion processes. The fundament of the circular economy is the recirculation of previously used materials (wastes) of which central elements are the first comminution and separation mechanical processes.

Topics: Fundamentals of particle breakage; Innovative methods for particulate characterization; Coarse grinding and classification processes, especially for minerals, ores, cement and other materials; Grinding, dispersing and classification of fine particles, micro- and nanomilling applied to pharmaceutical, chemical, material, and electronic industries; Cell disintegration and recovery of high value-added products in biorefinery, green processes, food industries; Comminution and separation in recycling industries and waste processing: plastic wastes, WEEE, MSW, construction and demolition wastes, agricultural wastes, used solar panels, used wind turbines, and other wastes; Mechanochemical and mechanofusion processes, mechanical bulk and surface transformations, mechanical alloying; Transport and process modelling across length scales (CFD, multiphase flow, DEM, PBM, …); Wear, erosion and product contamination; Plant operation, innovations in milling and classification technologies including automation, machine learning, in line sensors, etc.

Further information will follow.
Website: https://escc2023.mke.org.hu 


Working Party meetings


The Working Party Comminution and Classification meets at least once per year for a workshop and industrial visits combined with the business meeting.

Mission statement EFCE WP “Comminution and Classification”


Comminution is a very old discipline. Food has had to be ground since the first days of mankind. A second push was produced by mineral processing. The ore is bound up within the rock. This compound is ground to liberate the locked up ore particles which then can be separated by means of mineral processing, e.g. density separation flotation or leaching. An early description of the grinding and other process steps is given in Agricola, 1556. Around 5 % of the electricity generated worldwide is used for grinding processes, mainly in the ore and cement industry.

There are two main reasons for the comminution of products:

  • to separate compounds
  • to increase product quality.

One of the best known and best investigated materials is cement: higher strength occurs as particle size is decreased.


The main task of the EFCE Working Party on Comminution and Classification is the organization of the European Symposium on Comminution and Classification (ESCC) that takes place regularly and attracts academic and industrial experts from all over the world. It permits most of the following points as well that are tasks of the WP.

  • spread of new research results worldwide
  • interaction in between academia and engineering in industry
  • transfer of research results in practical use
  • improvement of technology
  • exchange of research results and best practice in between different countries
  • exchange in between different sectors of industry

 

Working Party members

 

Chair:

 
Prof. Dr. Arno Kwade Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany

Members (delegates and guest members):

Prof. Dr. Peter Balaz Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
Prof. Dr. Hakan Benzer Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey
Prof. Dr. Alain Chamayou Ecole de Mines d‘Albi-Carmaux, France
Benoit Clermont
Magotteaux SA, Vaux-sous-Chèvremont, Belgium
Prof. Dr. Magnus Evertsson Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden                                        
Prof. Dr. Jozsef Faitli University of Miskolc, Hungary
Prof. Dr. Christine Frances INP-ENSIATEC, Toulouse, France
Prof. Dr. Mojtaba Ghadiri University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Dr. Michael Juhnke F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, Basel, Switzerland
Prof. Dr. Haim Kalman
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
Prof. Dr. Vadim Mizonov
Ivanovo State Power Engineering University, Russia
Prof. Dr. Fabio Montagnaro
University of Naples "Federico II", Italy
Dr. Frank Müller BASF SE, Ludwigshafen, Germany
Prof. Dr. Tomas Sverak Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic

Events of the Working Party

 

European Symposium on Comminution and Classification - ESCC

 

One of the tasks of the Working Party on Comminution and Classification has been to organise the series European Symposium on Comminution and Classification - ESCC. The first in the series was organised in Frankfurt a. M. in 1962. Since then an European Symposium on Comminution and Classification has been organised regularly.

SAVE the DATE
ESCC2024
Previous ESCCs:
No Year Venue             Further information
1st 1962 Frankfurt, Germany               
2nd 1966 Amsterdam, Netherlands  
3rd 1971 Cannes, France  
4th 1975 Nuremberg, Germany  
5th 1980 Amsterdam, Netherlands  
6th 1986 Nuremberg, Germany  
7th 1990 Ljubljana, Slovenia  
8th 1994 Stockholm, Sweden  
9th 1998 Albi, France  
10th 2002 Heidelberg, Germany  
11th 2006 Budapest, Hungary  
12th 2009 Espoo, Finland  
13th 2013 Braunschweig, Germany Conference proceedings
14th 2015, 7-10 September Gothenburg, Schweden Website
15th 2017, 11-14 September Izmir-Seferihisar, Turkey  
16th 2019, 2-4 September Leeds, United Kingdom Website
17th 2022, 27-29 June

Toulouse, France

Website

ESCC brings together individuals from industry and academia who are interested in comminution and classification applications. The symposium offers a platform for contacts between different fields from pharmaceuticals through food processing to heavier applications in mineral processing. Furthermore, the symposium has a strong post-graduate thrust providing research students with the opportunity to present their research to colleagues.

 

Previous activities

 

History - ChairmanShip

The EFCE Working Party on Comminution and Classification was started on 10 April 1963 by Professor Hans Rumpf, Germany, the first Chair of the Working Party until December 1976.
He was succeeded by Professor Klaus Schönert, Germany, Chair of the Working Party from 1977 to 1994.
Both contributing immensely to the science of comminution and classification.

Professor Schönert was succeeded by Professor Eric Forssberg, Sweden, who chaired the Working Party from 1995 to 2007, followed by Prof. Kari Heiskanen,  Finland, who took over the Chair in May 2007.

In September 2011, Prof. Arno Kwade was elected by the Working Party members to succeed Prof. Kari Heiskanen in the position of Chair of the Working Party.