A system-wide approach to minimize the operational cost of bench production in open-cast mining operations

Abstract

The production cycle of open-cast coal mines generally includes drilling, blasting, loading, hauling and coal preparation activities. Individual optimization of these activities does not mean that the whole system is optimized. This paper proposes a cost model considering all activities in mining cycle and system-wide approach to minimize the total mining cost of bench production. Since the fragmentation size and blast-hole diameter are linked to all activities of mining system, they are considered as decision variables in the problem formulation. The operation costs are then minimized by using the evolutionary algorithm. Moreover, the impact of the change in the explosive price, and the hourly unit cost of equipment on total mining cost is quantified by sensitivity analysis. A case study is implemented to demonstrate the developed model.

A review of UAV monitoring in mining areas: current status and future perspectives

“…Although TLS is highly accurate, and is generally treated as ''true'' results, some research has shown that it was practicable to use UAVs in MA when taking into consideration factors such as cost, accuracy, and mine size. At present, UAVs equipped with digital cameras have been used widely in MA for terrain surveying (Chen et al 2015;Esposito et al 2017;Kršák et al 2016;Lee and Choi 2015;Ozdemir and Kumral 2019), earthwork volume measurement (Hugenholtz et al 2015), three-dimensional reconstruction (Chen et al 2015;Salvini et al 2018;Xiang et al 2018), slope and geological hazard monitoring (Haas et al 2016;Malpeli and Chirico 2015;Tong et al 2015).…”

“…Underground mining has caused collapse and fissuring of land surface, and subsidence has destroyed large areas of arable land, leading to persistent hazards such as soil erosion, waterlogging and increased carbon emissions (Lechner et al 2016;Qu et al 2017;Xiao et al 2019b). Open-cast mining produces spoil heaps, tailings, solid waste and other problems, which impact on land use (Ozdemir and Kumral 2019). With an increase of mining depth and mining angle, slope stability has brought hidden dangers to mining areas (MA) with open-cast mines.…”

Optimization of drill bit replacement time in open-cast coal mines

“…de Werk et al (2017) proposed a model to compare the parameters of two different material haulage systems by sensitivity analysis. Ozdemir and Kumral (2018b) applied sensitivity analysis to determine the impact of variations of explosive price, the unit cost of equipment, and electricity price on the total mining operating cost. Yüksel et al (2017) performed sensitivity analysis to prevent long-range spurious correlations for block size localization in open-cast coal mines.…”

Reliability-based performance analysis of mining drilling operations through Markov chain Monte Carlo and mean reverting process simulations

“…If there are delays due to lack of available equipment, subsequent processes (e.g., blasting, loading, and hauling) will also be delayed such that production targets are not attained. 9 To address the risks arising from available drilling equipment, stochastic modeling is conducted-using past failure and repair data-to simulate the available equipment in the fleet through multiple future scenarios. The stochastic simulations methods are used to calculate a range of production quantities.…”