Frank Crundwell receives the Bill Neale-May Gold Medal
- Wits Alumni Relations
Witsie metallurgist add another honour for his contribution to engineering
Dr Frank Crundwell (BSc Eng 1983, MSc Eng 1986, PhD 1988, BSc Hons 2001) has been honoured with the 2024 SAIChE Bill Neale-May Gold Medal at the South African Institution of Chemical Engineers (SAIChE) in May this year.
The award recognises his achievements and significant contributions to the fields of chemical and metallurgical engineering. The award is the highest accolade presented by SAIChE, celebrating remarkable contributions made by chemical engineers to the industry and their profession.
The SAIChE statement said: “His innovative research and leadership have made a global impact while advancing technology in Southern Africa, epitomising the spirit of the SAIChE Gold Medal. We congratulate Dr. Crundwell on this well-deserved recognition and thank him for his exceptional contribution to the profession.
Dr Crundwell is widely regarded as a global expert in mineral dissolution and leaching, with applications spanning metal extraction to dentistry. He is the founder of CM Solutions Metallurgical Consultancy and Laboratories and a Fellow of several institutions, including SAIChE, Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and Institution of Chemical Engineers. His groundbreaking research has garnered international recognition, including the esteemed Wadsworth Award from the US Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration.
In 2023, he achieved another significant milestone by being elected an international member of the US National Academy of Engineering. At the time, he told Wits Alumni Relations that “creativity” and a “non-linear problem solving” approaches were the key ingredients in his recipe for success.
“I mean, not necessarily starting at the beginning and working through a problem, but looking at the overall area, bring different fields of study to the problem, looking at all the component problems, redefining the problem while searching for solutions.
“I’ll give you an example. When I was a lecturer at Wits, I got interested in bacterial leaching. The predominant view at the time was that the bacteria could directly consume/attack/eat minerals. However, I started with mathematically modelling the tests that others performed and saw that simpler explanations might be involved. Then I looked at the experimental designs and found flaws in that.
“We redefined the ways in which other researchers conceptualised the bacterial activity on minerals. But the real breakthrough came when I realised that I could grow the bacteria in an electrochemical cell – two vastly different fields! This enabled me to develop a much better apparatus, and once that was done, my students and I were able to resolve the debate and show that bacteria didn’t directly attack the minerals, but that the main action was mediated by a chemical intermediate. This work was published in the top microbiology journals – although we were chemical engineers!
“I did the same thing for the dissolution of minerals. I noticed that an impurity accelerated the rate at which zinc sulphide dissolved, and asked why. This lead me down the path of how semi-conducting properties of minerals play a part in their dissolution, which resulted in the unlikely combination of semiconductor physics with mineral dissolution, all done by a chemical engineer!”
He shared a few memories of his time at Wits: “Anyone who entered the chemical engineering building over a period of 35 or more year would have crossed paths with Donald Williams (BSc Eng 1966, MSc 1966). All of us have stories of survival of his course! He taught with minimal notes and exacting tutorials. Requests for assistance were met with 'think for yourself' or similar. Although we bore scars, I learned to be scientifically rigorous in a take-no-prisoners manner from him and my colleagues whom he greatly influenced.
“We had a great class of students, Dr Bruce Young (BSc Eng 1983, MSc 1985, PhD 1989), Cavan Hill (BSc Eng 1983, MSc Eng 1986) and Brett Cronje (BSc Eng 1983, MSc Eng 1986), challenged me to keep up with them. We remain life-long friends.
“In addition, the Department of Chemical Engineering had a magnificent staff that taught me and who I later joined as a staff member: Tony Bryson (BSc 1962 PhD 1966), Bill Harris (BSc Eng 1962), Dr Kevin Brooks (BSc Eng 1980, PhD 1986), and Sven Godorr (BSc 1988, MSc 1991, PhD 1999), to name a few. I was fortunate to learn from them as an undergraduate and a staff member.”