Open Pit Mine Planning and Design, Two Volume Set & CD-ROM Pack, Third Edition, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 17

Orebody case examples

17.1 INTRODUCTION

In most mining engineering curriculums, there is a capstone course called ‘Senior Design.’

During their academic careers, the students have taken a number of courses on individual

topics in mining engineering such as surface mining, rock mechanics, materials handling,

drilling and blasting, mine finance, mineral economics, etc. In this capstone course the

students will be drawing upon this background and complete a near pre-feasibility level

evaluation of some mining property. Beginning with the location information, geology and

drill hole data for a given prospect, the student calculates the resource base, estimates the

costs and recoveries, selects a price, determines the reserves, selects a production rate and

a corresponding equipment fleet, develops a mine plan, calculates the economic indicators

and writes a comprehensive engineering report. Unfortunately, it is often difficult for the

students to procure the necessary drill hole data for carrying out the project, and hence quite

a lot of time is spent simply spinning wheels. In the way of a response, in this chapter, eight

drill hole data sets have been included on the distribution disk:

1. The Arizona Copper property

2. The Minnesota Natural Iron property

3. The Utah Iron property

4. The Minnesota Taconite property

5. The Kennecott Barneys Canyon Gold property

6. The Newmont Gold property

7. The Codelco Andina Copper property

8. The Codelco Norte Copper property

All of the data sets are of a size that can be run using the CSMine software. The Arizona

Copper property data have been used in the CSMine tutorial.

In this section, some actual background information has been included for the different

properties as well as some complementing information taken from various other operations.

In some cases, the data have been adjusted to facilitate analysis. No attempt has been made

to provide complete information since the students are expected to be able to do some work

on their own.

One of the objectives of the senior thesis is to get the students familiar with the mining

literature. Keeping up-to-date on mining developments around the world is important to a

modern mining enterprise. In many cases, commodity prices are established on a worldwide

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Orebody case examples

basis and an individual mining operation competes by being cost competitive. This gener-

ally means using the highest level of suitable technology. The developments in mining

technology, the arrival of new mines, the demise of old mines, operating tips, general min-

ing news, new regulations, etc. have been and are the subject of various types of mining

publications. Unfortunately, the indexing of mining articles is still poorly done due to the

fact that mining is a relatively very small field. One often has to work very hard to find

pertinent articles on a particular subject. The Internet is a popular way of finding and dis-

tributing information today. Some journals are now available on the Internet. However,

older journals/publications containing much valuable information are not. Listed below are

few of the journals that might be consulted by the student during the process of collecting

information:

•

Coal Age

•

Canadian Mining Journal

•

CSM Quarterly

•

CIM Bulletin

•

Australasian IMM Transactions

•

Engineering and Mining Journal (E/MJ)

•

Australian Mining Journal

•

AusIMM Bulletin

•

Pit and Quarry

•

Transactions IMM

•

Mining Congress Journal

•

Mining Engineering (SME)

•

Mining Engineer (UK)

•

Int. Journal of Surface Mining and Reclamation

•

Int. Journal of Mining Engineering

•

South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM) Journal

•

Northern Miner

•

Gluckauf

•

World Mining Equipment

•

Soviet Mining Science

•

International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Science

•

Fragblast Journal

•

Rock Mechanics

•

Skillings Mining Review

•

Explosives Engineer

•

World Mining Equipment

•

Mining Journal (London)

•

Mining and Scientific Press

Some important books and publications are:

•

Peele’s Mining Engineers’ Handbook

•

USBM Information Circulars

•

USBM Report of Investigations

•

USBM Bulletins

•

CANMET Publications

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