De Bavay was born in
Vilvoorde, Belgium, second son of R. de Bavay, Knight of the
Order of Leopold / a son of Xavier de Bavay and his wife Marie Thérèse de Bavay née de Bontridder. In March 1884 De Bavay arrived in
Melbourne and worked as a brewer at Thomas Aitken's Victoria Parade Brewery. Following
E. C. Hansen's discovery of the impact of yeast variety on the beer quality, De Bavay grew Australia's first pure yeast expressly cultured for top-fermentation brewing. His students included
Jack Breheny. De Bavay was attracted to the "sulphide problem" of Broken Hill, where great mounds of potentially valuable
zinc blende had accumulated, but could not be shipped economically because of the
gangue content. If an economical method of separating the ore were developed, a great new industry would be created. C. V. Potter and
Guillaume Delprat had made useful work on development of
froth flotation and by July 1904 he had evolved his own process, skin or film flotation. In 1904 he founded de Bavay's Sulphide Process Co. Ltd, with Cohen and
William Baillieu, and the following year another company De Bavay's Sulphide Process Co. Ltd to purchase De Bavay's patents. In 1909 '''Amalgamated Zinc (De Bavay's) Ltd''' was founded to put the process into practice. After Australia entered the Great War in 1914, De Bavay was approached by the
Minister for Defence,
George Pearce, to develop a process for production of
acetone, needed for manufacture of
cordite. Within two weeks he had developed a process based on the fermentation and distillation of
molasses. He made a gift of the patent to the Commonwealth of Australia. De Bavay was put in charge of development and erection of the Government's
Commonwealth Acetate of Lime Factory. De Bavay was naturalized in November 1902. He died at his home on Studley Park Road,
Kew, Victoria aged 88. His remains were buried in
Melbourne General Cemetery. ==Recognition==