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Introduction
Grade control or ore control is an operation where
blasted material is flagged as either ore- or waste-based
on blasthole samples and geological information. The
procedure usually includes sampling, geological mapping, grade estimation, ore/waste selection, which may
include several categories, blasting and dispatching
of truckloads. The efficiency of the grade control is
subject to various factors such as sampling errors,
conditional bias introduced by grade estimators, and
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2 Simulated models of block grades in a deposit (left) and a typical estimated model of block grades in a deposit (right)
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the options generated by the different possible combinations and assess performance. It should be noted that, in
practice, ore selection approaches compared herein while
integrating specific financial considerations, are assessed
with additional considerations to their profit indicator,
including the proportion of ore selected, metal produced
and so on, as one does in practice through reconciliations.
Economic functions are but a way to integrate more
information in the ore\waste selection decision processes
and become of particular importance as one attempts to
deal with the non-linearity in various additional aspects,
such as geometallurgical attributes (from recoveries,
multiple elements, to grindability and so on). The
framework of economic functions for ore\waste selection
facilitates the integration of rock grindability attributes
to grade control and is presented herein, given that it is a
well appreciated component of delivering ore from a
mine to a mill and relates to improving performance of
grinding circuits, costs and time efficiencies, and power
consumption, among other aspects. The non-linear
metal recoveries or any other geometallurgical attribute
of interest can be facilitated through adopting the
economic functions discussed herein. In addition and
for reasons of completeness, notes that the effect of blast
movement needs to be in practice incorporated as well,
and is a topic presented by Dowd and Dare-Bryan
(2007).
All conditional simulation methods return a range of
possible values from a conditional cumulative distribution function (cdf) of the type
F x; zjn~ProbfZxzjng
where Z(x) represents a way to look at modelling the
uncertainty in the unknown true value, and (n)
represents local conditioning data within the specific
neighbourhood of location (x). The steps needed to
obtain a sample of the cdf for point or block grades are
to: (a) generate a change of support, i.e. obtain the
average of point grades over the volume of any block
(Peattie and Dimitrakopoulos, 2013), although the most
practice is to work with point support models and draw
dig-lines based on them; and (b) obtain the conditional
distribution of the grades Z(x).
In the following sections, first, economic classification
functions for grade control are presented in detail.
Subsequently, the comparative performance of the three
different economic classification functions when combined with three different commonly used simulation
methods is presented for a different blasthole drilling
patterns (densities) and cutoff grades; all are benchmarked against the traditional estimation based grade
control, as well as compared to the completely known
deposit. Third, an application and comparison to the
conventional approach at a gold mine follows and
benefits are presented. Next, the issue of adding other
critical grade control parameters such as grindability in
the economic classification functions previously examined is presented and elucidated using an example.
Lastly, summary and conclusions follow.
Loss functions
The loss associated with each type of misclassification
error can be expressed as a loss function L of the actual,
but unknown, grade. This loss is the potential revenue of
the block less the actual recovered revenue
L$~potential revenue{recovered revenue
In the scenario of misclassifying a block of ore as waste,
the potential revenue corresponds to the metal left
unrecovered minus the mining and processing costs
potential revenue~prz{ct {cm
where p is the unit metal price, r is the metal recovery
fraction, z is the metal grade and ct and cm correspond to
the processing and mining unit costs. Assuming that the
cost of mining ore and waste is the same, the recovered
revenue is given by
recovered revenue~{cm
Through the conditional distribution function, the
probability threshold for the block to be ore Po and
the average grade above the cutoff mz can be
determined and used to calculate the expected loss
resulting from misclassifying this block as waste E(Lw)
E Lw ~Po |prmz {ct
Similarly, the expected loss for the case of a block of
waste misclassified as ore E(Lo) is
E Lo ~(1{Po )|ct {prm{
where m2 is the average grade below the cutoff. The
block will be selected as ore if the expected loss for
selecting the block as ore is less than the expected loss
for selecting the block as waste E(Lw), i.e.
E Lo vE Lw
Profit functions
Profit functions involve specifying the expected profit
E(Pr) associated with each classification scenario. The
expected profit of classifying a block of ore as waste
E(Prw) is given by
E Prw ~{Po |prmz {ct
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Risk coefficients
Risk coefficients are positive multipliers quantifying the
impact of the loss. These coefficients can be applied to
both profit and loss functions. They may reflect the
mining requirements in terms of production targets by
increasing the chance of rejecting ore blocks or sending
waste blocks to the processing plant. The real impact of
these coefficients is yet to be explained. It has been
suggested that calibration studies should be carried out
through batch treatment, which would provide true
tonnage and grade results (Glacken, 1997). It is not
guaranteed that these coefficients will be the same from
bench to bench or for different parts of the deposit. In
fact, the calibration may be a difficult and expensive
process and therefore the use of risk coefficients should
be avoided unless their real impact on the production
targets is well understood.
The profitloss approach using risk coefficients as
suggested by Glacken (1997) ignores the mining cost cm
and uses only one cutoff grade. This leaves room for
interpretation when formulating the profit in a more
general case. The following interpretation may not be
unique but it handles several cutoff grades and is
consistent with Glackens examples
Profit
recovered revenue{(weight|penalty)
Penalty ~
0
prz{cm {cp
Penalty~{cm { prz{cm {cp
~{ prz{cp
Profit~ prz{cm {cp {v0 1 { prz{cp
~{cm z(1zv0 1 ) prz{cp
0
{cm
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3 A bench of grade control data from the Walker Lake deposit, please see explanations in the text. The histograms for
each of datasets (a), (b) and (c) are shown below each plot of data values
4 Pixel plots of a realisation for each conditional simulation method, and for both the 195 data set and the 725 data set
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5 Summary of outcomes from classifying the Walker Lake deposit sampled on a 666 m pattern for a low cutoff grade
relative to the sample mean
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Scenario A
Scenario B
Scenario C
Processing cost/$/t
Mining cost/$/t
Recovery/%
Cutoff grade/g/t
Gold price/$/oz
8.00
2.00
80
0.65
$480
8.64
2.00
95
0.74
$380
8.85
2.00
80
0.86
$400
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6 Summary of outcomes from classifying the Walker Lake deposit sampled on a 666 m pattern for a cutoff approximately equal to the sample mean
best for the two lower cutoffs. For the highest cutoff,
SIS performs best. The P-field method combined with
any economic classification function performs poorly in
all cases for the 666 m sample spacing. Ore selection
from estimation or simulation yields between 10% and
approximately 65% of the possible revenue when using
666 m sampling.
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7 Summary of outcomes from classifying the Walker Lake deposit sampled on a 666 m pattern for a high cutoff relative
to the sample mean
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8 Revenue earned by each combination of simulation method and economic classication function for each cutoff grade
relative to perfect selection for the 666 m 195 data points sampling pattern
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9 Summary of outcomes from classifying the Walker Lake deposit sampled on a 363 m pattern for a low cutoff relative
to the sample mean
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10 Summary of outcomes from classifying the Walker Lake deposit sampled on a 363 m pattern for a middle cutoff relative to the sample mean
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11 Summary of outcomes from classifying the Walker Lake deposit sampled on a 363 m pattern for a high cutoff relative to the sample mean
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12 Revenue earned by each combination of simulation method and economic classication function for each cutoff
grade relative to perfect selection for the 363 m 725 data points sampling pattern
Table 2 Summary best and worse performing combinations of economic classication functions and
conditional simulation methods for example
presented
Spacing/no. samples Cutoff
Best
Worst
666 m/195
SGS profz
SGS prof2
SIS min loss
SIS min loss
SGS min loss
SIS min loss
PFS
PFS
PFS
PFS
PFS
PFS
363 m/725
Low
Medium
High
Low
Medium
High
prof2
prof2
profz
profz
profz
prof2
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15 a Ore/waste classication from minimum loss classication without accounting for grindability; b map of grinding
throughput; and c blocks changing from ore to waste (red) and from waste to ore (cyan)
mining operation, which also leads to increased availability of the plant to treat true ore. Reducing the
instances of ore sent to waste errors promotes mine life
and sustainability.
These findings present an example of improvements
that could be made over current best practice when
grindability is considered. The impact of ore misclassification will be more significant in regions of marginal
grade ore, particularly where such ore also tends to have
longer grind circuit residence. In addition, other geometallurgical attributes may be further integrated into grade
control, as long as economic classification functions and
orebody uncertainty models are considered.
Reserves
Traditional grade control
Min loss/simulation (reconciled)
Result from min loss and SIS:
Additional 12 226 tonnes at 1.02
increase or 2.8%
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Ounces
21 180
20 682
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presented in this paper. Two basic approaches, minimising loss or maximising profit were presented along
with the classification process involving the combination
of conditional simulation of the orebody and calculation
of the economic classification function for each orebody
block or smu. An advantage of these functions is that
the asymmetric relationship between monetary loss and
misclassification can be taken into account. However, it
is noted that these functions are only indicators of the
monetary implications of different classification decisions, and do not represent actual loss or profit figures
(for example, discounting is not considered, and there is
no link to a mining sequence).
A comparative study using an exhaustive dataset
representing the actual grades of a bench to be mined is
presented to elucidate the potential performance of three
economic functions, namely minimum loss, maximum
profit with mining costs and maximum profit excluding
mining costs, with three commonly used stochastic
simulation methods, namely, SGS, SIS, and P-field.
Related combinations are compared for two different
blasthole sampling patterns, a sparse one (666 m
spacing) and a dense one (363 m spacing), and three
cutoff grades, one below the data mean, one about the
mean and one above the mean.
At larger sample spacing, the SIS approach appears
more dependable for a range of cutoff scenarios and
deposits. Although other methods perform better for
some cases, by and large the sequential indicator
approach combined with a minimum loss economic
classification function returns the highest profit for this
case study. By comparison, the probability field method
for conditional simulation generally performs poorly,
and shows a loss of possible revenue in comparison with
other simulation methods. Even more noteworthy is the
poor performance of the probability field approach
Acknowledgement
Thanks are in order to our colleagues Dean Collett and
Doug Corley for their multifaceted assistance on the
testing of new grade control methods, as well Chris
Farelly for his diligent work, particularly his work on
grindability related to the present paper, technical
insights, and humour. The authors also thank KCGM
for providing some of the data used herein.
References
Asad, M. W. and Dimitrakopoulos, R. 2012. Optimal production scale
of open pit mining operations with uncertain metal supply and
long-term stockpiles, Resour. Pol., 37, (1), 8189.
Asad, M. W. and Dimitrakopoulos, R. 2013. A heuristic approach to
stochastic cutoff grade optimization for open pit mining
complexes with multiple processing streams, Resour. Pol., 38,
591597.
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