Ecological Costs Internalization in Ultimate Pit Optimization

Abstract

The tradition way of open pit mine design just takes the operating and capital costs into account while the ecological costs of mining to ecological environment is not a concern at all. For this concept, based on the mine ecological footprint and eco-cost models which have been built by author, the ecological cost allocation models which take mining, stripping and ore dressing as incentive are built. It contains allocation models of unit mining ecological costs, stripping ecological costs and ore processing ecological costs. Moving cone elimination algorithm and iteration method is used for a open pit metal mine to optimize ultimate pit. The studies show that the pit optimization which contains ecological costs has a great impact on the ultimate pit. Compared to the pit optimization with an end treatment, ecological costs are contained in the pit design is better for either economy or environment.