Client: Major Copper Mine
Project Objective
The primary objective of the Digital Stockpile application is to provide near real-time accurate 3D ore control models of stockpiles for use in mine planning.
Challenge
In order to maximize the product grade and recovery, variance in the mineral processing plant needs to be minimized from the get-go. This means that the processing plant must be fed a consistent and known feed, minimizing the effect of changing ore properties, including hardness and grades. A key part of achieving this is having detailed knowledge of what is on the upstream stockpiles. Knowing stockpile material characteristics and quality will increase operational efficiency by allowing informed tactical decisions during ore control and mine planning.
Solution
The Digital Stockpile application uses 3D stockpile modelling to keep track of when and where material parcels are deposited and reclaimed in near real time. Material flows and the associated material properties (e.g. volumes, key minerals/elements, hardness, throughput, recovery, acid mine drainage, lithology, source) are tracked from the mine, through the stockpiles, and into the processing plant, providing real-time information, predictions, and alerts of when material will arrive at a particular point and when stockpile operations fall outside of set boundaries.
Fig 1: Screenshot of the Digital Stockpile application overview.
Key Features
- Digital stockpile assets able to be created and managed by the client.
- Near real time 3D block model outputs of stockpile contents can be delivered to users or imported directly into mine planning software.
- Parallel 3D and 2D stockpile modelling to provide multiple sets of results that are robust to data uncertainty and errors.
- Full logging of events for dumping, reclaiming, and stockpile configuration changes.
- Alerts for dumping errors and other parameters set by users.
- Dashboarding and reporting functions.
Full historian of stockpile data for root cause analysis.
Fig 2: Screenshot of the Digital Stockpile application.
Note that the dataset in the diagrams is not representative of any operational mine.
Benefits
- Optimize throughput and recovery with blending decisions into the plant based on value. (Value Based Ore Control — VBOC)
- Reduce Dumping Errors and the resulting value destruction
- Overhaul the Stockpile System management strategy with comprehensive 3D information
Mine to Market: Value Chain Optimization
Powered and connected together by the brains.app platform, the Digital Stockpile Optimization Application is one of a suite of real-time decision-making applications that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to optimize each process; from mine-to-market.
Our Material flow model connects these applications together to drive even greater efficiency gains.
