Modeling quality of concentration factory feedstock in ferruginous quartzite mining at the Lebedinskoe deposit

Abstract

Statistical modeling of daily average or mean-shift content of useful component in ore hauled from a certain production face to a rehandling point, to an intermediate (including blending) storage, or to a concentration factory enables mine planning to proceed to the next level. This also allows meeting one of the major tasks of the modern mining industry, namely, stabilization of the useful component content in processing feedstock. The geological information quality and initial interpretation are the major factors of data reliability in modeling any mineral mining, production or processing chain. Currently, almost all mining companies in Russia have introduced operational exploration procedures. The analysis of the long-term operational exploration data collectively with the geological exploration data allows determining patterns of useful component in different areas and sites of a mineral deposit. The present research made it possible to obtain magnetite content variation per levels of the test deposit and to reveal correlations between different quality characteristics. Using the statistics on magnetite distribution in the ferruginous quartzite ore body of the Lebedinskoe deposit, as well as with regard to the current capacities of production faces, the simulation model has been constructed in the framework of this research. The model enables prediction of the daily mean content of the useful component in the mineral feedstock of the concentration factory at different number of sampling points and at the varied daily average production capacity.