Evaluation of the Geometallurgical Indexes for Comminution Properties at Sarcheshmeh Porphyry Copper Mine

Abstract

Geometallurgy has become an important toll to predict the process behavior of the ores, and to decrease the production risks cause by variability of geological settings. In this paper geometallurgical index for grinding properties of the ore has investigated. In a comprehensive research at Sarcheshmeh porphyry copper mine, geological features, what were supposed to affect the main process responses including product’s grade-recovery, and plant’s throughput, were subjected to investigate as the possible geometallurgical indexes. The rock breakage variability, in terms of a ball mill grinding circuit and its effects on the plant throughput and energy consumption are presented. Ninety samples were collected based on geological features including lithology, hydrothermal alteration, and geological structures. The samples were characterized using XRD, XRF, and electron and optical microscopy. A simulated test method for Bond ball mill work index (BWI) was used to perform the comminution test. The results showed BWI values vary from 5.67 kWh/t to 20.21 kWh/t. Examination of the possible correlations between BWI and the geological features showed that the key geological feature related to comminution variability is lithology. In addition, the hydrothermal alteration would be an effective parameter in the period that the plant is fed with a single lithology

Geometallurgical Simulation of the Work Index in a Porphyry Copper Deposit Using Geostatistical Techniques

“…Currently, the exploratory stage of deposits faces challenges associated with geometallurgical uncertainty (Lishchuk et al, 2020;Mwanga et al, 2015) which impacts mineral processing (Dominy et al, 2018). In this context, response attributes influence the resource value because up to 70 % of the total energy consumption is used in comminution (Mohammadi et al 2021); therefore, this impacts porphyry copper deposits characterized by high lithology hardness (Bilal, 2017). In this regard, the Bond Work Index "BWi" is frequently used for the calculation of the energy requirement (Aras et al, 2019); consequently, it is essential to evaluate its spatial variability within the deposit, however, its limited information in early stages of mining (Garrido et al, 2020) and high cost of metallurgical tests (Ranjbar et al, 2021) hinder its characterization.…”

Revisión del modelo geometalúrgico para la estimación de recursos minerales en depósitos pórfido cupríferos

“…La industria minera enfrenta importantes desafíos derivados de problemas técnico -económicos (V. Lishchuk & Pettersson, 2021) que se asocian a la incertidumbre geológica de los yacimientos (Mohammadi et al, 2021) además de dificultades en el procesamiento mineral (Mwanga et al, 2015) impuestas por la variabilidad mineralógica y propiedades de la roca (Montiel & Dimitrakopoulos, 2015) que se han convertido en parámetros críticos hacia una minería sostenible y sustentable en el tiempo (Egaña et al, 2020). Algunas de estas propiedades son la ley mineral, dureza de la roca, chancabilidad, consumo de reactivos y recuperación que corresponden a atributos geometalúrgicos los cuales se distribuyen de forma variable en un depósito e influyen en el procesamiento mineral (Köken & Özarslan, 2018).…”