Strategic Mine Planning solutions for Open Pit Mines.
What plant size maximizes profit? What mine capacity is more efficient?
Net Present Value (NPV) represents the cash flow to which a discount rate is applied, set according to project risk level or profitability requirement.
The Strategic Mine Planning (SMP) issue of an open pit project is generally defined looking for NPV maximization by searching an optimized extraction sequence.
That sequence must respect operational restrictions such as slope angles, limits and drilling rates, as well as mineral mining and processing capacities.
By implementing GEOVIA WHITTLE and SIMULIA Isight solutions, it is possible to apply the Hill of Value concept, establish ranges of mining, processing and cut-off grade capacities, with the aim of increasing value and evaluate its robustness and reliability, against the range of design variables that were selected (Fig. 1).
After the definition of a range according to the objectives of the project, a representative mining plan of the region will be provided; for this mining production plan and given the selected robust strategic guidelines, an improvement of up to 30% is expected with respect to the value of an un-optimized base case (Fig. 2).
The methodology proposed in this solution allows creating and analyzing NPV surfaces (or any other strategic indicator) in three or four dimensions (3D with graph with respect to a fourth variable).
These solution spaces are created from the generation of thousands of design points, defined as different combinations of mine and plant capacities, cut-off grades and other strategic parameters that need to be analyzed.
This approach will allow knowing the location of the project on the value surface and the path to reach a region close to the optimal NPV, but also robust and reliable.
Learn more about Strategic Mine Planning solutions for Open Pit Mines from GEOVIA.
AUTHORS:
Cristian J. Poblete
María A. González
Joaquín A. Romero
Daniel L. Fuentes
