Important improvement of utilization the available geological reserves of the South mining district deposit in Majdanpek in the new defined optimum contour of the open pit using the Whittle and Gemcom softwares

Abstract

A significant increase in copper prices on the World Metal Exchange, whose lower limit in the long term will not be under $ 6,000 per ton of cathode copper, and reduction the operating costs of ore mining by introduction the high capacity mining equipment in the production process, requires a new consideration of the open pit South Mining District Majdanpek and defining the new final (optimum) limit of mining for the given techno economic parameters. Using the modern software tools for strategic planning and optimization of deposit Whittle and software for design the open pit Gemcom, the optimum contour of open pit was designed on the principle of maximum profit realization. In the newly-defined contour of analyzed open pit, significantly higher geological reserves of deposit are affected in relation to the previous considerations of those amounts to the amount of 172,388,652 t of ore with average copper content in the ore of 0.383%. .