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1 Planning Ore Extraction Sequences in Open Pit Mines
1 Planning Ore Extraction Sequences in Open Pit Mines
Catch Bench
Final Pits Slopes allow
Berm Benches to be wide enough to
Catch rocks and accommodate
A berm. (This is often less than
Toe to Than 10 meters).
Crest Slope
Over-all
Slope
Geometry of a Working Bench
Truck
Turning
radius
Impact of a Working Bench
Over-all
Slope
Next we need to
Identify procedures to
Run
Click File
After smelting and refining charges copper bring 25 cents a pound and electrowon
Copper brings 35 cents. Moly in concentrate is 75 cents a pound. I will load my fake
Small pit into shell 27 and use an F1 for my report extension
Now Click Add value for my next run
After Entering the Values for 12
Runs I Return to Procedures
I Designate 12 runs and Enter My
Comment
In this case I only
Needed one
Procedure, but
Multi-runs can be
Used for sequences
Of different
Procedures.
I Will Next Save My Package and
Responses
This allows me to use the same sequence to do something in the same way each time
Or to come back and selectively edit for changes without having to redo from scratch.
I Click Run and the Multi-Run
Starts
Observation Our Price Fake Method did indeed get us stage pits
The Push-Backs Dont Look Very
Practical
130 M
120 M
In fact the tendency of price-fake pits to make huge jumps is called The Gap.
It is a common problem (and mathematically a feature of Learch-Grossman
Which defines solutions only at certain points)
The Gap
Large jumps are impractical to schedule as a
push-back
Learch-Grossman infact solves an altered
problem that only has solutions periodically
defined
Thus you may raise the price and nothing
happens till the pit jumps.
Lets try a floating cone and put smaller price
changes in the range where the jump occurs.
Check for Our Price Jump Point
50/lb Cu
45/lb Cu
65/lb Cu
We could mine the 50 cent pit top down, and 58 to 65 cents make a practical one
Active bench push-back
Here is Another Try
45
58
57
65
45
57.3 57
65
We still have our gap. In a long term planning environment we have widely
Spaced drill holes. Our grade estimation variances or the market fluctuations from
A butterfly in Nepal stretching its wings are larger than our gap. The ability to get
Price fakes to completely define our mining sequence is an illusion.
Tools We Have For Getting A
Real Push-Back Plan
We could always use the price shells and
then try to use our own guesses about
pushback direction to design pushbacks with
the Pit Expansion Tool
We will ultimately have to do this but we can get
more guidance
We could run that Floating Cone with
geometric and price constraints to get so
realistic push-back shells before we use the
pit expansion tool.
Enter the Multi-Pit Option
Push back 1
Push back 2
Push back 3
Push back 4
Push back 5
Then down to
The bottom.
Multi-Pit is not the only way to
control expansion direction
The first panel of
MSOPIT allows
Me to consider
Only part of the
Blocks in my
Block model
If I wanted a 15%
Discount rate I
Would input the
Number 15.
You Can Also Apply Discounting
By Time from another panel
What is Discounting?
Using Engineering Economics
principles, money received later in time
is work less than money earlier in time
The discount rate is the percentage of
value lost each year
MineSight will consider your mining
rates and when certain ore is likely to be
mined and then lower the value of the
block accordingly
Why Would I Do This
Sometimes when you calculate an ultimate pit
or stage pits you want to tell people very
quickly about what the Net Present Value of
the Pit is
If you use the direct value of ore you will tell
people how much money will ultimately be
generated
Discounting lets you approximate NPV before you
have a more complete mine design and cut-off
grade optimization strategy.
I Made A Nasty Remake About
Discounting Earlier
Whats the Harm
If you want a quick NPV estimate nothing
But if you are going to do a more detailed
design it will distort the results
As I discount later mined ore I actually will cut-
back on ore I would strip to get
Ore 20 years in the future has little NPV impact
today, but 20 years from now $50,000,000
dollars will be $50,000,000, I probably will not
just walk away
Putting Discounting into Blocks
Leads to Double Counting
After we get our pit stages we will try
different mining rates and cut-off grades
to see what produces the best NPV
If the blocks have NPV estimates built into
them on general assumptions it will
interfere with NPV accuracy when we
make more detailed assumptions.
Multi-Pit in MineSights most
Powerful Anti-Gap Tool
Lastly I will order the computer to make sure all my pits are nested
Inside my Lerch Grossman ultimate pit (which I have stored in pit
Surface 2).
Some Multi-V Observations
Multi-V is really incrementing the value
of blocks
This is similar to what we did by stepping
through metal prices with a multi-run (Of
course we know the Gap nailed us good when we did this)
Multi-V does not recomputed the value of
blocks every time
Instead it multiplies an already computed value
by a constant
Its kind of a cheap version of a multi-run
The Other Choices
Multi-Z increments the depth of ore
considered
Bottoms takes a series of base strings that
you entered projects pits up from them and
then puts the pits in value order
This can be useful if your orebody produces a
bunch of little pits instead of one big one
Resources is not a pit design tool at all it
just reports the ore content a value of an
already developed pit.
At the End of the Process We
Will Have a Series of Practical
Push-Backs
Where Do I Go From Here?
I have two tools ahead
MSVALP
MSVALP lets me consider what mining rate will
give me the best NPV or PVR
It also lets me consider that I can improve my NPV
and PVR by changing the cut-off grade with time
MineSight Strategic Planner
Calculates in detail where you will be pulling ore
from each year of operation
Completing a Long Term Mine
Plan
By taking your stage pits and using MSVALP
for general optimization
And then using MSSP to get a detailed plan
You end up with a detailed year by year plan
of where you will mine and what it will be
worth in the end
This plan then becomes the basis for day to day
operating decisions when the mine is actually built
Our Decision Now
When do we use the pit expansion tool
and detail in our roads and benches for
these mining phases we created?
We could do this before or after we run
MSVALP
Since benches and roads alter slightly the
exact ore we mine if we do it now we feed
more detail to MSVALP
Decision Time
On the Other Hand
MSVALP assumes we will mine each
phase from the top down
If it finds it needs to prestrip ore to keep the
amount of equipment we need steady it will just
assume it can be done without figuring where
the material will come from
Since MSVALP is not really specific about
where the material it is mining comes from
being real specific about roads might not
be important.
Some Educators Observations
If you are doing a Sr. Design Project you have
a team
There is a lot of CAD work to put in roads and
benches
It is hard to have a lot of people working on different
phases at the same time
This can mean a bunch of team members sitting idle
while the benches are done and then everyone hurrying
to make up for it.
MSVALP will also be used to consider different mining
rates
If one of those rate decisions changes your truck size that
could change the road width and ruin a lot of work
someone else has done.
Suggestion
Break up the team
Send someone to work on phase bench
and road designs (to be used later in
MSSP)
Then have other team members use the
rough phases you have now to run the
mining rate and cut-off grade optimizations
of MSVALP
Assignment 1
Using the File for Which You Did an
Open Pit design a minimum of 7
practical stage pits
Your first should be a practical top down
initial pit.