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A new mathematical model of open pit mine production scheduling with linear
stockpile formulation

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 A new mathematical model of open pit mine production scheduling with
linear stockpile formulation

Karo Fathollahzadeh a, Mehmet Cigla a, Elham Mardaneh b, Waqar Asad a

a Mining Engineering and Metallurgical Engineering, WA School of Mines: Minerals, Energy and Chemical Engineering, Curtin University, Australia

b School of Electrical Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Curtin University, Australia

 constraints), but it also take into consideration the quantity of

Abstract - The objective of an open pit mine production materials that extract from the pit and fed to different
scheduling (OPMPS) model is to develop a schedule of material destinations which
S. Mohammadzadehmoghadam, Y. Dongmust be within the allowable mining and
extraction that maximizes the net present value (NPV). The processing capacity constraints. In real world, stockpiles
material extraction is described as the movement of ore and applied to hold excess materials with different grade until
waste material from the pit to various destinations, such as, processing capacity is available or keeping low-grade materials
stockpile, waste dump, processing options and/or heap leach, for future processing. First, Bley et al. (2012b) proposed non-
based on the geological and operational constraints. In practical linear version of open pit mine production scheduling by
applications, stockpiles are designed and utilized to maximize modifying warehouse formulation for stockpiles. Later, Bley et
early high value feed to the processing plant. The proposed al. (2012a) developed a linear approximation method to find out
model in this research considers linear stockpile formulation by the optimum schedule by relaxing non-linear constraints. More
defining separate stockpiles based on material type (i.e. oxide, recent work considers approximation linear formulation of open
transition, fresh) and grade items (i.e. Au, Cu). An application pit mine production scheduling. Topal and Ramazan (2012)
at a hypothetical case study was considered to reflect the value applied linear programming as an exact approach to solve an
of the proposed strategy for stockpiling in open pit mining OPMPS with stockpile option. Kumar and Chatterjee (2017)
operations with the application of different pre-processing employed branch and bound algorithm to solve an extension
strategies. version of OPMPS with stockpile option that contain blending
constraints and applicable for open-pit coal mining. Moreno et
Keywords— linear stockpile formulation; open pit; production al. (2017) presented modified formulation of Bley et al. (2012b)
scheduling; mixed-integer linear programming; exact method. and share a four approximate model to simulate OPMPS with
stockpile option. Recently, Fu et al. (2019) exploited an
I. INTRODUCTION extension of OPMPS with stockpile option and waste dump
location. This study aims to develop new mathematical
An open pit mine operation is a complicate system that
framework of open pit mine production scheduling with linear
comprises the extraction process of materials from earth’s
stockpile structure and introducing pre-processing strategy to
surface to derive profit by selling them in the competitive
improve efficiency of proposed framework by considering
market. This extraction process starts from the pit and moves
different possible destinations (based on content of block) for
from one destination to the next within the system. To make
each block within the mineral value chain.
mining operations more tractable, mine planners partition
orebody into thousands of equal-size cubic shapes, which are
called block (Figure 1). A set of attributes such as grade, metal
content, quantity (tonnes) and coordinates is then assigned to or
estimated for each block by using geological and geostatistical
methods (Carrasco et al, 2016). Economic information such as
metal price, mining cost, processing and re-handling costs are
combined with geological attributes like grade and tonnage to
convert the orebody model into an economic block model so
that each mining block has a specific economic value ($).
According to metal content and economic value, ore blocks
have a positive value (revenue greater than operation and Figure1. Mining block model with a designed pit
processing costs), while waste blocks have a negative value
(revenue smaller than operation and processing costs). II. MATHEMATICAL FRAMEWORK
The presented mathematical framework uses the model, which
Given the economic value of each block as an input, the open is based on the research by Fu et al. (2019). Their research
pit mine production scheduling (OPMPS) seeks to find optimal attempt was the optimization of open pit mine production
sequence of extraction to determine which block to extract, scheduling with multiple destinations and processing streams.
when to extract them and where to send them, e.g., to the Figure 1 illustrates flow of materials within the framework of
stockpile or to the waste dump or to a particular processing an open pit production schedule. The open pit mine operation
option subject to various constraints (Scott, 2016). The OPMPS within this research framework contains an ore deposit (as
not only must respect the precedence constraints (slope
block model), waste-dump, processing plant, heap leach and
tailings.
Based on the geological conditions, the mined material was
categorized into different material, domain and grade types to
demonstrate their response to different processing routes and
destinations as shown in Figure 1. Material types are oxide
material (OX), transition material (TR), fresh material (FR)
depending on the alteration in the geology. A geological
feature, an intrusion, was also considered. Inside the intrusion
is domain 1, outside is domain 2. A material type (OX, TR, and
FR) can exist in both domains 1 and 2, therefore, having
different response to processing routes and destinations.
Different material attributes Au (g/tonne) and Cu (%) are the
grade items in the block model. Many grade bins were created
based on material attributes, different domains and material
types, which are specific to the geology, the mining method and
the expected practical constraints. Considering Au as the
control grade for binning then defining 3 Cu grade bins, there
would be 18 grade bins for each Au bin range as shown in Table
1. Selection of the grade bin ranges for both Au and Cu was
based on the statistical analysis of the block model.
Figure 2. A framework of an open pit mining operation.
Table 1. Grade bins.
The proposed framework contains objective function and a
range of constraints ranging from operational constraints to
processing constraints.
 The objective function maximizes the NPV of the open
pit mine which contains flow of materials from the pit to
the grade bins, the pit to the processing plant and heap
leach, the pit to the waste dump, including materials from
the stockpile to the processing plant and heap leach.
 Reserve constraints ensure that each block must be
mined at most once during life of mine (LOM).
 Mining capacity constraints ensure that quantity of
material fed from the pit to the various destinations (grade
bins, waste-dump or the processing plant and heap leach)
remains within the allowable mining capacity.
 Processing capacity constraints ensure that the material
moving from the pit or grade bins to the processing plant
and heap leach remains within the allowable processing
capacity.
 Average grade constraints control the average grade of
materials fed to processing plant and heap leach from the
pit or from the stockpile.
 Slope constraints ensure that for each mining block, all
predecessors (overlying blocks) must be mined by
creating a cone-shaped extraction at a pre-defined slope
angle.
 Stockpile balance inventory constraints ensure that the
material inventory in the stockpile-bins at the end of
current period (except first period, i.e. t≥2) is equal to the
quantity of the materials in the grade bins at the end of
previous period plus the total quantity of materials moving
from the pit to the grade bins at the current period minus
the total quantity of materials fed from the grade bins to
the processing plants as well as heap leach at the current
period. Furtheremore, the material inventory in the grade
bins at the end of the first period (i.e. t=1) is equal to the
total quantity of materials moving from the pit to the
stockpile at the first period minus the total quantity of
materials moving from the grade bins to the processing
plants and heap leach. In addition, the materials in the
grade bins at the end of each time period remain within the
allowable grade bins capacity. Consequently, the total
quantity of materials moving from the grade bins in each
time period is less and equal to the on-hand materials in
the grade bins at the end of previous period.
 Power and steel consumption constraints ensure that
available power and steel are adequate for the quantity of
materials going to the processing plants and heap leach.
 Fixed cost constraints (mining and processing) ensure
that the fixed cost incures in a time period when mining or
processing occurres.
III. DATA PRE-PROCESSING
The aim of data pre-processing is to fix variables as well as
remove excess data to enhance the contextually relevant
information (Li et al, 2016). A varying range of pre-processing
techniques exist to deliver these benefits (Merchan and
Maravelias, 2016). In this study, a suitability concept is
implemented as a pre-processing technique for grade bins
(Figure 3). For each block based on grade content as well as
material attributes, a suitable grade bin is determined. Let’s
consider a block which has 0.85 g/tonne of Au, 0.27% of Cu
within oxide material of domain 1. The variable 𝑥𝑖𝑠 is equal to
1 if grade bin 𝑠 is suitable for block i, otherwise is zero.
Therefore, based on the information in Table 1 and
characteristic of each grade bin, the variable 𝑥𝑖𝑠 for block 𝑖 can Table. 2 Input parameters.
be defines as, Mining cost ($/tonnage) 1.6
Processing cost ($/tonnage) 9
𝑥𝑖7 = 1 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑥𝑖1 = 𝑥𝑖2 = 𝑥𝑖3 = 𝑥𝑖5 = . . . . . = 𝑥𝑖18 = 0. Price Cu ($/tonnage) 5,500
Price Au ($/gr) 42
Similarly, the same pre-processing concept was implemented to Recovery (percent) 0.9
define the suitability of each mined block to all other Discount rate (%) 10
destinations. Therefore, unsuitable destination for each block
mined was removed or not considered by defining variables Table 3. Flow of material within a value chain.
Year Pit-WD Pit-PP Pit-St St-PP Cs
only related to suitable destination. This eliminates a number of
decision variables in the mathematical model, consequently 1 56,016 17,914 38,708 2,528 36,180
decrease of solution time and space required in the solution. 2 42,101 17,278 7,550 8,630 35,100
3 37,500 10,754 23,981 21,381 37,700
4 29,761 7,643 0 28,000 9,700
5 24,254 12,513 0 9,700 0

Table 4. Numerical Results.

CPU GAP
No. Continuous Discrete time optimality
blocks Periods Variables variables Constraints (sec) (%) NPV ($)
Figure 3. Suitability grade bins for block i.
64 5 4,101 360 1,805 27 0.00 2,012,043
130 5 6,236 690 2,231 127 0.02 4,370,119
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 543 5 9,874 785 4,231 516 0.09 4,725,673
A wide range of models such as mixed integer nonlinear
programming (MINLP) and relaxation techniques have been V. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
developed to solve the open pit mine production scheduling Cooperative Research Centre for Optimising Resource
with stockpile option. However, they are prone to providing Extraction (CRC ORE) provided the funding (Project ID Code:
non-feasible solutions due to the complexity of the problem in P4-007; Curtin University Grant # 58994) for the work
terms of block model size and non-linear constraints that are contributed in this paper. The collaboration between the authors
required to track the stockpile blalance. would not have been possible without the financial support
from CRC ORE. CRC ORE is part of the Australian
In this study, pre-processing techniques and linear stockpile Government’s CRC Program, which is made possible through
formulation were implemented as a part of optimiztion the investment and ongoing support of the Australian
procedure of traditional open pit mine production shceduling Government. The CRC Program supports industry-led
with stockpile options. The proposed framework was applied to collaborations between industry, researchers and the
a subset of 64, 130 and 543 mining blocks of copper orebody community. We are thankful to the CRC ORE management
for a scheduling horizon of 5 years to compare the number of (specially, Paul Revell, Michael Scott and Luke Keeney) for
decision variables (binary and continuous), number of their valuable collaboration and technical comments.
constraints, computational time, optimality gap and NPV. The
proposed model was implemented in GAMS 27.1.0 and run on
a PC with a 2.9 GHz Intel® Core™ i7-7820HQ processor and VI. CONCLUSION
32 GB RAM memory. The value of input parameters are
presented in Table 2. In this study, we have formulated and implemented an open
pit mine production scheduling with considering linear
Table 3 illustrates a year-by-year summary of material flow stockpile options. To reduce the size of the problem,
within value chain (a block model with 543 blocks). In first year increasing the efficiency as well as enhancing contextualy of
of schedules, a total of 56,016 tonnes of material move from the the relevant information, we pre-processing technique based
pit to waste dump (Pit-WD) and 17,914 from the pit to on material attributes (B-Ms suitability). The numerical results
processing plant (Pit-PP). The model also schedules movement from implementation of the models are presented in Table 3
of overall 38,708 and 2,528 from the pit to stockpile (Pit-St) as and Table 4.
well as from the stockpile to processing plant (St-PP),
respectively. Last column (Cs) represents a quantity of ore by
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