David Bastin

David Bastin graduated as a Mining Engineer from the University of Liège in 1995. He began his career as a process mineralogist, with the main focus of his investigations being the characterization of raw materials used in the production of phosphoric acid. His first missions took him to the Taïba phosphate deposit in Senegal, the Kola phosphate deposit in Russia, the Palabora phosphate deposit in South Africa and the Dorowa phosphate deposit in Zimbabwe. He then took part in a mission to evaluate the resources of the Salar de Coïpasa in Bolivia on behalf of Engineers Without Borders. His first contacts with metallurgy took place in 1999 when he participated in the creation of a biometallurgy laboratory at the Federal University of Ouro Preto in Brazil. Between 2000 and 2007 he was entrusted with the study of the recovery of precious metals and the improvement of the flotation of oxidized Cu-Co ores in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His numerous field missions allowed the introduction of complexing agents as catalysts for flotation by sulfidation of heterogenite group minerals on an industrial scale. This experience was then transferred to support the start-up of the mixed ore flotation line at the Kansanshi mine in Zambia and to optimize the flotation of Akka and Bleïda ores in Morocco. In 2007, the GeMMe Laboratory of Georesources, Mineral Engineering and Extractive Metallurgy of the University of Liege took over the operational management of the laboratory. Its activities were then diversified in the techniques of physical separations and hydrometallurgy applied to end-of-life products such as end-of-life vehicles and electrical and electronic waste.