Michael Sudbury

Michael P. Sudbury is a Professional (Metallurgical ) engineer with over fifty years experience in the non-ferrous metals mining and processing industry working in a technical and administrative role on a wide variety of projects.

His work has encompassed operating supervision, process development, process engineering, custom feed acquisition and latterly environmental technology development and management as corporate director of special projects and environmental affairs including the development of an environmental and implementation of the corporate environmental policy and environmental auditing system.

The process design, development and operating experience covers milling, smelting, refining and metal recycling particularly with respect to nickel, copper, cobalt, zinc, silver, indium, cadmium and platinum group metals with associated elements including sulphur, arsenic and silicon.

Most of the environmental projects were directed to finding and developing cost effective ways to reduce the quantity of gaseous emissions (SO2 & CO2), control particulate (metal oxides) to improve the quality of aquatic discharges (mainly soluble metals), to effectively isolate tailings, to improve energy efficiency and to increase metal recycling.

These objectives were pursued both corporately as outlined above and externally through participation in the work of with various organizations and associations including but not limited to the Environmental committees of The Mining Association of Canada and The Ontario Mining Association, Canadian Standards Association ISO 14000 pilot program, Air & Waste Management Association Non-ferrous Committee, Canadian Industrial Producers Energy Conservation Program, Alliance for Responsible Environmental Action (Climate Change), and the Mine Environment Neutral Discharge Program (development of cost effective isolation techniques for waste rock and concentrator tailings).

Papers have been prepared presented and published on a range of subjects including sulphur dioxide collection as acid, waste management, innovation, clean technology development, tailings systems design, slag utilization, effluent treatment and process economics.

More recently attention has been directed to harmonizing extractive metallurgy and other resource industry operations with the global eco-system and building greater social awareness in the industry through application of sustainable development concepts and through encouraging a more broadly based and fundamental approach to applied research.

Current work includes evaluating ways of beneficially enhancing natural sinks for surplus atmospheric carbon dioxide; seeking to identify the inter-relationships of the many factors contributing to ice age dynamics; promoting a search for ways of breaking hard rock efficiently and continuously; and exploring opportunities for more productively using mine cavities, secondary materials, recyclable metals and materials and reviewing the potential of granulated slag as a solar energy receptor and capacitor.

Personal interests and activities include the study of biotechnology, information systems, languages, landscaping, gardening, swimming, jogging, traveling and politics.