Simultaneous optimization of cut-off grade and capacity of mineral processing plant

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Abstract

Cut-off grade and capacity of processing plant are two factors influencing the design and the feasibility study of mine and calculation of these two plays an important role in mining economy. The main purpose of this study is to optimize the cut of grade and production capacity considering price uncertainty, simultaneously. Slight changes on lane algorithm and its formulation as a nonlinear programming problem were done, leading to design a model that can optimize the both factors simultaneously. A heuristic model similar to geometric Brownian model has been used to consider uncertainty in the model. An assumed copper mine data were used to model verification. Solver plugin in excel for model solving was used. Finally, the recommended values for plant’s capacity were in range of between 16 and 17 with mean value of 16.5 million tons. This value for cut of grade is between 0.17 to 0.2 with the mean value of 0.19 percent, and for net present value is between 900 to 1200 with the mean value of 1080 million dollars. The optimum capacity distribution of processing plant has slight negative skewness, optimum cut of grade distribution has slight positive skewness and approximately maximum net present value has normal distribution.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Modeling in Engineering
Volume 15, Issue 49
September 2017
Pages 235-244

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History

  • Receive Date: 05 May 2015
  • Revise Date: 12 September 2015
  • Accept Date: 28 September 2015

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