Effects of Geostatistically Simulated Geological Units on Life-of-Mine Optimization of a Gold Deposit

Morales, Daniel; Dimitrakopoulos, Roussos

Abstract

Simultaneous stochastic optimization of life-of-mine (LOM) planning integrates different sources of uncertainty. One source of uncertainty typically overlooked is the size and spatial distributions of different geological units, conventionally modelled through wireframing. A case study at a gold deposit presents the stochastic LOM plan based on two groups of simulations of the deposit. The first group includes simulations where the deposit’s geological units are modelled through conventional wireframes, and gold grades within each unit are geostatistically simulated. The second group includes realizations where both the geological units and corresponding gold grades within the units are simulated. The results show that accounting for the uncertainty and variability of both geological units and gold grades generates substantially different LOM plans. While presenting similar recovered metal and LOM years, the net present value is approximately 20% higher when accounting for uncertainty of geological units. This improvement is attributed to the better representation of geological uncertainty given by the simulation of geological units.

Biography of the presenter

Daniel received his bachelor's and master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Chile in 2012, with the thesis work in cave-back estimation for block caving mines. After that, he worked at Shimin Engineering, where he participated in the development of several mining engineering projects in Chile, such as OGP-1 from BHP and Caserones from Lumina Copper. He recently received his M. Eng. degree in Mining Engineering at Cosmo stochastic mine-planning lab at McGill University, with his work on evaluation of high-order categorical simulations of geological domains through the simultaneous stochastic optimization framework.

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Effects of Geostatistically Simulated Geological Units on Life-of-Mine Optimization of a Gold Deposit

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Abstract

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