Mine-to-mill integration for block cave mines

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The Geomechanics Group and the Mine-to-Mill Groups at the University of British Columbia are actively pursuing research on Cave-to-Mill, an innovative approach to integrating cave mining with milling processes to improve production forecasting and support real time grade control. Based on recent research efforts using preliminary information from the New Afton mine, the Cave-to-Mill approach can change the way that deep low-grade high tonnage deposits are mined in the future. The proposed research will advance cave mining by increasing project value and energy performance. The research is supported by the New Afton Mine as well as Canadian technology providers that are critical to the development of the Cave to Mill concept. The proposed research spans across fields that are particular to cave mining operations and looks to adopt operational strategies that up to now have been carried out at open-pit operations. The research will relate the underground caved ore size and hardness to the downstream mineral processing performance. Furthermore, it will investigate the use of sensor-based sorting systems at a cave operation. A two-year NSERC Collaborative Research and Development (CRD) grant is proposed that will work towards integrating sophisticated laboratory experiments and numerical methods to leverage historical data from the operation of the current East and West Caves to generate predictive models for evaluation, planning and potential development of new cave areas at New Afton (e.g. the C-Zone, that is being considered for development in the near future). The research will apply sensing systems to classify rock according to parameters such as particle size, hardness, metal content and ore type that will inform practices such as sorting, campaigning or blending to reduce energy consumption and benefit overall process metallurgy.