Maximizing mine-mill reconciliation through a new cut-off grade and capacity setting model

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ThreeDify is a Canadian mining design and planning software company. There is currently fierce competition**in the mining software industry. ThreeDify aims to diversify its product portfolio by adding new features. As a**part of this aim, ThreeDify inclines to collaborate McGill team to develop a new cut-off grade and capacity**setting module.**The cut-off grade theory is currently built on the valuable metals. However, unwanted minerals within the rock**have a significant effect on processing recovery and throughput. When a cut-off grade is applied to production**blocks, the head grade of processing cannot guarantee to satisfy the grade requirements. The proposed research**will address to incorporate the effects of unwanted minerals into the cut-off theory in such a way as to add new**value to a mining project. Also, to minimize the cost associated with idle capacities, the relationship between**cut-off grade and capacity installation will be investigated.**The research will search a spatial aggregation technique in a way access constraint of blocks are considered. In**this process, grade requirements of valuable and unwanted minerals will be set at the center of loss function to**be used. A loss function fitting grade tolerances of mineral processing design will also be explored. The cut-off**grade problem will be formulated as an optimization problem. The objective function will be expressed as the**minimization of deviations from the required grades through the selected loss function. Given that the block**grades are estimated/simulated by sparse data, there is uncertainty in grades. Multiple images of orebody will**be used to quantify risks emerging from this uncertainty. The optimization approach will be extended to**integrate probabilistic nature of the problem to find a robust solution. The critical outcome of this research will**be to find a cut-off grade meeting installed capacities coinciding with orebody heterogeneity in feasibility**studies of a mining project. This model has a strong potential to produce a new software product such that mine**- mill reconciliation is maximized. Thus, the efficiency of mining operations is enhanced.