Long-term Open-pit Mine Production Scheduling with Grade Engineering

Abstract

Open pit mine production scheduling is a strategic decision-making problem that plays an important role in surface mining, as the economic viability of a mining project is highly dependent on careful long-term planning. An open pit mine production schedule seeks to determine the optimal sequence for a mineral deposit and the flow of materials within a mineral value chain (i.e., stockpiles, waste dumps and processing streams). This thesis investigates open pit mine production scheduling with the incorporation of Grade Engineering. The Grade Engineering concept was introduced by the Cooperative Research Centre for Optimising Resource Extraction. This thesis then, for the first time in the literature, develops and implements a new mixed-integer programming formulation for open pit mine production scheduling that considers Grade Engineering preconcentration techniques.