116 XXXI International Mineral Processing Congress 2024 Proceedings/Washington, DC/Sep 29–Oct 3
• Changes to existing equipment/circuit selection and
configuration
– Examples include, AG mills plus high efficiency
ball mills and AG in combination with pebble
mills, Cerro Verde HPGR and ball mills, increased
use of stirred mills and balance of grinding duties
within a circuit.
For brevity, only selected aspects are considered in the fol-
lowing sections.
Front-End Mining
The use of in-situ methods, which generate almost a final
product, with minimal mining, comminution and process-
ing, are the most extreme example of minimizing energy.
Under these conditions, physical mining is only required
for access to the orebody and to implement reagent cap-
ture and/or barrier steps. Depending on the type of deposit
and conditions, the ratio of mining and drilling input can
vary, with some methods requiring practically zero physical
ingress, beyond drilling. The most widespread application
of In-Situ Recovery (ISR) is seen in the uranium industry,
where orebody geometry and characteristics can be suited
and where physical access involving personnel needs to be
minimized.
A level away from the use of in-situ methods, is the
application of high resolution mining. In this approach, the
aim is to minimize grade dilution, via increased control and
accuracy of the mining process. Such a keyhole mining sys-
tem faces a range of challenges, namely:
• Ore occurrence maybe unsuitable, i.e., highly dis-
seminated and or not tightly structurally controlled
• Access to ore can only be gained via the removal of
large quantities of waste material
• Size and frequency of ore veins may inherently con-
tain inter-vein waste, or the ore presentation in com-
parison to mining equipment size, dictates that waste
will inevitably be taken with ore parcels
Figure 5. Water stress and mine density
• Changes to existing equipment/circuit selection and
configuration
– Examples include, AG mills plus high efficiency
ball mills and AG in combination with pebble
mills, Cerro Verde HPGR and ball mills, increased
use of stirred mills and balance of grinding duties
within a circuit.
For brevity, only selected aspects are considered in the fol-
lowing sections.
Front-End Mining
The use of in-situ methods, which generate almost a final
product, with minimal mining, comminution and process-
ing, are the most extreme example of minimizing energy.
Under these conditions, physical mining is only required
for access to the orebody and to implement reagent cap-
ture and/or barrier steps. Depending on the type of deposit
and conditions, the ratio of mining and drilling input can
vary, with some methods requiring practically zero physical
ingress, beyond drilling. The most widespread application
of In-Situ Recovery (ISR) is seen in the uranium industry,
where orebody geometry and characteristics can be suited
and where physical access involving personnel needs to be
minimized.
A level away from the use of in-situ methods, is the
application of high resolution mining. In this approach, the
aim is to minimize grade dilution, via increased control and
accuracy of the mining process. Such a keyhole mining sys-
tem faces a range of challenges, namely:
• Ore occurrence maybe unsuitable, i.e., highly dis-
seminated and or not tightly structurally controlled
• Access to ore can only be gained via the removal of
large quantities of waste material
• Size and frequency of ore veins may inherently con-
tain inter-vein waste, or the ore presentation in com-
parison to mining equipment size, dictates that waste
will inevitably be taken with ore parcels
Figure 5. Water stress and mine density