A preview of the Industrial Minerals & Aggregates technical program at MINEXCHANGE

The MINEXCHANGE SME 2026 SME Annual Conference & Expo will bring a focused Industrial Minerals & Aggregates program to Salt Lake City, emphasizing decarbonization, digital tools, alternative resources and smarter mine design. Across eight technical sessions, presenters illustrate how producers are responding to new regulatory and market pressures while modernizing core practices. Innovations in Industrial Minerals & Aggregates opens the program with AI-enabled digital prospecting, modernization of Italy’s dimension-stone sector, GIS-based market modeling, mobile mining systems, bentonite stabilization, drone-enabled bathymetry, and cement-plant fuel-switching analyses. In Critical & Battery Minerals I, talks examine unconventional resources and emerging recovery methods, including Utah alunite reassessment, lithium extraction from produced water, REE–niobium flowsheet development, graphite-district updates, and improved binder liberation from battery “grey mass.” Advanced Processing of Industrial Minerals, Tailings, and Waste highlights thickening aids, tailings-basin design, phosphogypsum valorization, rare-earth preconcentration comparisons, and digital twins for process control, while the Phosphate and Potash session covers reagent development, improved rheology, high-frequency sizing, CT analysis of potash cores, and retrofit case studies. Mine Design for Industrial Minerals & Aggregates focuses on LaModel calibration, Hoek–Brown pillar characterization, mine-layout controls, mine-life optimization strategies, quarry dewatering, sub-economic block-model decisions, and highwall remediation. Critical & Battery Minerals II continues with microwave-assisted leaching, heavy-mineral recovery from sand-operation waste, deep eutectic solvent leaching, selective leaching after thermal pretreatment, and a new non-TOFA spodumene collector. In Processing, Recycling & Sustainability, speakers address quarry water recycling, global lithium-recycling impacts, carbon-reduction planning, reserve strategies aligned with SK-1300, metals recovery from aqueous waste, dense-phase conveying, hydrocyclone diagnostics, and urban C&D recycling. A joint session with the SME Health & Safety Division adds research on void detection using MWD and machine learning, silica toxicology, autonomous drone inspections, flight-path optimization, direct-on-filter FTIR silica analysis, and field-based highwall remediation practices. Together, the 2026 IM&A program spotlights how data integration, sustainability, and safety are reshaping industrial minerals and aggregates — and provides a clear view of the tools guiding the sector’s future.

A preview of the Industrial Minerals & Aggregates technical program at MINEXCHANGE

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Mining Engineering’s Weekly Rundown: Episode 73

Get your SME Foundation VIP Access Conference Pass to MINEXCHANGE 2027

“Check the box” and help support the SME Foundation

To view the past issues of the UCA magazine you must be a member of SME/UCA.

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