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To cite this article: E.K.C. Chanda & Kadri Dagdelen (1995): Optimal blending of mine production using goal programming and
interactive graphics systems, International Journal of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Environment, 9:4, 203-208
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International Journal of Surface Milling. Reclamation and Environment 9 (J995):20j·208 203
E.K.C.Chanda
Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Limited. Nkana Division, Kitwe, Zambia
Kadri Dagdelen
Colorado School of Mines. Mining Department, Golden; CO 80401, USA
ABSTRACT: Although production scheduling in the mining context, is primarily concerned with the
sequence of removal of the mining blocks, there is an inherent task of blending the run-of-mine
materials before concentration. The objective is to mine in such a way that the resulting mix
meets the quality and quantity specifications of the processing plant or the customer. The
blending problem becomes even more important with regard to short/medium term mine planning,
where the planner is concerned with reducing grade fluctuations in the run-of-mine material and
how much to mine in order to satisfy demands in tonnage and composition. For instance, in the
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case of coal, economic and environmental considerations may dictate stringent limits on ash,
sulphur, and BTU content. Blending of ores is also beneficial for a number of reasons: it can
improve the efficiency of the processing plant, it minimises the need for selective mining
hence, reducing mining costs and increasing mine production, it extends the ore reserve base
and it contributes to the grade control process.
Since blending requires that the resulting mix of different ores be of a certain quality and
quanti ty, realization of this requirement should be among the primary goals of any mine
production planning system. Classical linear programming has been widely used in modelling
production/blending problems in the mining industry. However, the classical LP formulation of
the blending problem suffers from the fact that only one objective function is permitted at a
time. In recent years CAD systems have been established as standard mine planning tools. In
these, too, blending is achieved via trial-and-error and so the optimum solution is not
guaranteed.
This paper describes a linear goal programming model of the blending problem in short term mine
planning. An example application of the model to a coal mine is presented. The capabilities of
this model are discussed in comparison to those pertaining to an interactive graphics based
system, in terms of minimizing the deviation from set targets for tonnage and given quality
parameters. Improvements in the quali ty of the planning resul ts can be realised through a
combination of these two techniques.
mineral raw material to the customer or (drilling and blasting, loading and
concentrator at the specified quality and transport) can accomplish some degree of
quantity. This is a must for mines with a blending, hence contributing to quality
high degree of grade variability control. Whatever technique of blending used
(inhomogeneous), especially for commodities at a mi.ne, it is necessary to model the
where product quali ty is important such as situation mathematically in order to ensure
coal, bauxit~, iron ore, gold etc. In optimal blending. In the next section
general, it is assumed that there are many formulation of the mathematical model for the
sources of the mineral raw material f r'om blending problem will be give.
which to mine for blending . Next is a set of
quality specifications that the blend must
satisfy. For example, for a polymetallic 3 FORMULATION OF A MATHEMATICAL MODEL
mine, this could be copper, lead, zinc and
gold. In case of phosphate ore, this is The most successful area of application for
percent P20S' For coal the ash and sulphur linear programming (LP) in the mining
content are cricical blending parameters. industry has been production/blending
Blending in mine production planning may be problems. Cement production presents a
dictated by any or all the following factors: classic blending problem where a number of
ingredients must be mixed according to a
given recipe. There are several variations of
- Design of the mill: usually designed to the blending problem formulation using linear
handle a certain quali ty of through-put to progranuning as reported by (Gershon 1986,
operate economically. Less tonnage leads to Gunn and Rutherford 1990). A classical LP
under utilisation, and unnecessarily high formulation of the blending problem has only
grades result in product los~es. one objective function subject to grade and
other constraints. Also, the optimal solution
- Environmental factors: law may specify the is not based on grade and tonnage targets,
minimum/maximum quali ty of mineral raw but on the value of the objective function.
material to be processed in order to reduce In this case, it is sufficient to have the
emissions, energy losses, etc. grade and tonnage of the blended ore within
the specified upper and lower limi ts. In
- If the schedule is tailored to suit a plant practice, however, the goal is to achieve the
belonging to another business entity (e. g. target grade of blended run-of-mine are.
coal for power plant, limestone for cement Hence, the limits,for these parameters become
plant, or iron are for steel mill), there is tighter, zeroing in on specific values. To
often a direct and well defined penalty for correctly model this si tuation a goal
deviating from the specified uniformity of programming formulation will now be
the material in the contract. presented. This is not a new technique and
has been used in the mining industry (Chanda
- Market requirement: should the ore be sold 1990) .
directly to customers, it has to meet certain
specifications. In this formation, only quality and
quantity requirements of the
The above problem description contains all blending/scheduling problem will be
of the concerns one would have in making considered. The strategy employed is to
blends. The basis for any blending model is achieve the target grade and tonnage of the
accurate information about the material to be blended ore via the minimisation of the sum
blended (ore blocks, dumps, etc). InfQrmation of absolute deviations of the individual
about quality can be obtained by sampling and quali ty parameters and tonnage from their
applying suitable estimation techniques, e.g· call values. Minimisation of these deviations
geostatistics. With regard to ore quality, thus becomes an additional goal of production
the following objectives should be considered planning. Ideally, these absolute deviations
in short term production scheduling. should be minimised to zero, but this may not
possible due to other factors. Nevertheless,
- Prediction of next periodls ore quality and the optimal solution will reduce these
reliability of such predictions. deviations to their lowest possible levels.
Hence, in th~ goal programming formulation,
205
additional variables (so called deviational = Grade of parameter k in ore from block
variables) and deviational constraints have j
to be introduced (Charnes and Cooper 1961). = Required grade of parameter kin blended
Following is a goal programming model of the ore
blending problem. Maximum allowable production in the
period
Minimum allowable production in the
A. Objective function: period
= Upper bound for parameter k
= Lower bound for parameter k
n I = Available ore for mining from block j
EX
j-1
j • Cj - E
1e-1
Wk '" Pk -
(1)
In the above formulation of the blending
problem there are two criteria of
·optimization in the objective function,
namely, the maximization of an economic
Pk positive deviation for parameter k criterion and the minimization of the sum of
Nk,
Wk
= Weighting
Negative deviation for parameter k
factor for parameter k
absolute deviations of grade and tonnage from
their target values.Theoretically, minimizing
Cj = Economic value per tonne of are
associated with block j
the sum of deviation, i.e., EWk*N k + Wk*Pk is
equivalent to maximising the function EX j -
Xj = Tonnage of ore to be mined from block j EWk*N k + Wk*Nk • The reader is referred to
Charnes and Cooper (1961), Lee (1972) for the
background theory. The planner assigns to the
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4 COMPUTER PROGRAM
n
EX
J-1
j ==' Tu (4) The computer program to solve the linear
system of equations (1) through (8) is based
on"the simplex method of linear programming
n (Charnes and Cooper 1961). The programs was
EX
j-1
j ~ T1 (5) written in Fortran 77 and implemented on
Personal Computer (Chanda 1993). Figure 1
shows the program logic and flow diagram for
interactive short/medium term mine
n (6) scheduling.
E (G jk - Guk ) .Xj:S a, for k=l, ••• I
The program incorporates assembler language
]-1
subroutines to facilitate better user
interface under the Fortran environment. The
n
(7)
information about the mineral resource is
E (G j k - G1k ) .Xj~O I for k=l, 2, ... I stored in a database. A series of menu
options ensures that the mine planner takes
j-1
control of the blending/scheduling process.
At the beginning of a planning session, the
engineer is presented with three options, i.e
D. Production control quit, modify an existing plan or generate a
new plan. When generating a new plan, one is
(8)
prompted for a new data file name which is
automatically saved as a unique input data
file for that project. Next the user is
prompted for number of operating shifts per
E. Non-negativity day and to indicate whether the problem.is a
minimization or maximization one. Quality and
quantity parameters are edited via a menu
that highlights the maximum, minimum, target
values and weighting factors for tonnage.and
Where quali ty parameters. Each time changes are
made in blending parameters, the simplex
Nt Negative deviation of tonnage from mine algorithm can be called to calculate the.new
call optimal solution. There are also options to
Pf positive deviation of tonnage 'from mine edit data base, force some ore sources out of
call consideration, and correct the optimal
TII\ Required production (mine call) solution manually.
206
- - - ENGINEEDR----PERSONAL COMPUTE I'cr~No S'.I101l J I~crnl>cr 9)
l::nd 011 Ii Aflnl '14
Dural"'" III pcnncl. U~I
20
H
J~
41"
)f>R
410
1600
ZOO(J
1.250
I. SOlI
I.)OCJ
23.000
]]900
BOO
')00
,.
j(j
4S
20(()
1700 l.SOU
17400 ')00 5'
1700 JI.JOO 1000 62
4' CJ 600 Uoo 21,)00 I.CJOCJ 211
S9 17011 1700 1.100 199(1(1 I90CJ 61
S7 17,} 1100 <lAOO U.SOO 60100 69
t 1000 9110
• Devillioa:
1.1"
·OS3
1'.000
-4000
7,7n
-an
63.0'
Figure 1: Interactive mine scheduling with /Uea ID Ope (lid) ·Mll.llld) S(%) BTUt%) A(%l C-<MUIl)
the goal programming based computer model. 410 .10 1.2j(J
20 23.000 1.500 50
24 )6' 1600 1.500 lJ.900 '.SOO '71
H 20W 1000 I.)ClO IHOO 7.jOO
.-
ToUl! I t...",u be(llrt: TOaAl'~ .(u:r: 9162S600 (I)
1.263. (%)
parameters, e . g., it may be necesSary to Sl1lflll
BTU 26.2911 (%)
1.26)9 (%)
26.).)6 <")
optimize the blend with respect to one or two Ash 1.91U C"" '.9HI (\to)
quality parameter out of say, the given four Bleadlllf rer.mU:fI ~~ Su1ler BTU AAb
under consideration. This means that some Upper limn 14001 US% 2900%
quality parameters may be allowed to deviate T.,.et \'lllI&' aooo t I.2S% H.oo%
1(/00 '"
I.~%
REFERENCES
Baaf i. E. 1983 , Appl i ca t i on o f mat hematical
programming to co al quality control .
Ph.D Thesi s . Univer s i t y o f Arizona , l 06p .
Bruno . R. • Hu u c h i , P . • Ra spa . G. • 198 6 .
Test of different product ion andplan s
production . cheduli n9 in a rock sal t depos i t.
Prae . 19th APCOM Symp¢sium, La s Vegas .
SHE / AIME . pp 397- 406 .
Chanda, E. R. C. , 1990 , An appl i ca t i on of goal
pr~r&lMli ng to product ion planning in t he
c rushed s tone i ndust ry . Internati ona l Journal
o f SUr fa c e Hi n i n g and Recl ama t i on . 4 , pp 125 -
129 .
Chanda , t . R.C. , 1993 , A method of opt imi zing
t he short ternl p roduction s chedul e in open
p it minin; of s t ratiform orebodi.s using
simulation and linear f\rog ra.'1l:llif)9 . Ph . D
Diultrt.ation . Techn ical Vnl ver s i ty of Berl i n .
11 4 pp .
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