The Center for Advanced Separation Technologies (CAST) announces its Third Workshop for representatives from both the coal and minerals industries and academia.

New technology to be featured will include:

• Advanced fine coal dewatering
• Environmentally friendly collectors
• Novel ultrafine sizing
• Advances in hydrometallurgy
• Modelling and control

A coal preparation workshop is planned for Tuesday.

The workshop will be held at the newly built Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center.

What is CAST?

The Center for Advanced Separation Technologies (CAST) was established in 2001 under the auspices of the United States Department of Energy (DOE) to conduct fundamental research in advanced separations. More specifically, the objectives of the center are:

• To create a knowledge base for solid-solid and solid-liquid separation processes as applied to the mining industry.
• To provide enabling sciences that permit economic recovery of materials that are being lost as waste or already disposed of in waste impoundments. More recently, research activities have been expanded to address the near-term interests of the U.S. mining industry. CAST research is carried out in the following areas:
• Physical Separations
• Chemical and Biological Separations
• Environmental Control

The Center was established as a partnership between the seven mining schools in the U.S.

• Virginia Tech
• West Virginia University
• University of Kentucky
• Montana Tech
• University of Nevada
• New Mexico Tech, and
• University of Utah

The Center brings together multidisciplinary expertise to solve various problems facing the U.S. mining industry.

The CAST 2007 Workshop is being held to present the results of the Center's ongoing research, to solicit feedback from industry representatives, and to discuss future industry needs in technology development.

For more information on the mission of CAST visit www.cast.mining.vt.edu/Mission/Mission.htm.