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Cave-to-mill : mine and mill integration for block cave mines

University of British Columbia

Population growth and economic development are expected to increase future global copper demand. The depletion of significant near-surface deposits and advances in detecting deeply buried ore has led to the mining industry progressively exploring further below the surface to discover new copper deposits. Accordingly, block and panel cave mining methods are being increasingly proposed as they allow massive, deeply situated ore-bodies to be mined economically. To improve the productivity of a mining method that will be used to excavate a growing proportion of global copper supply, an integrated mine and mill approach for planning and operating block cave mines, termed Cave-to-Mill, was developed. Key distinguishing features of cave mining, in comparison to other mining methods, are the uncertainty in the size of rock being fed to the mill and the lack of selectivity. As part of the Cave-to-Mill framework, fragmentation and sensor-based sorting studies were carried out at the New Afton block cave mine to investigate opportunities to improve overall productivity. Cave fragmentation is a key cave-to-mill parameter as it has implications on the productivity of both mining and milling processes. Fragmentation measurements of drawpoint muck, comminution tests and calibrated mill models were used to assess the impact of variations in feed size and hardness on New Afton mill performance. Analysis of historical mine and mill data showed that mill feed size and subsequently mill throughput are sensitive to the areas being mucked within the cave. A sensor-based ore sorting study, incorporating bulk and particle sorting systems, showed that rock from the New Afton copper-gold porphyry deposit is amenable to prompt gamma neutron activation analysis, and to X-Ray fluorescence sensors. A conceptual flowsheet, where both technologies are used as separate unit operations, was evaluated. It was found that the sorting concept demonstrated an improvement in the net smelter return of excavated material. Results from the study were used to develop a method to design and evaluate a block cave for the case where sensor-based sorting systems are included in the flowsheet.

Text

2018-12-03

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/67958

Mining Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/