A system-wide approach to minimize the operational cost of bench production in open-cast mining operations

Abstract

Abstract The production cycle of open-cast coal mines generally includes drilling, blasting, loading, hauling and coal preparation activities. Individual optimization of these activities does not mean that the whole system is optimized. This paper proposes a cost model considering all activities in mining cycle and system-wide approach to minimize the total mining cost of bench production. Since the fragmentation size and blast-hole diameter are linked to all activities of mining system, they are considered as decision variables in the problem formulation. The operation costs are then minimized by using the evolutionary algorithm. Moreover, the impact of the change in the explosive price, and the hourly unit cost of equipment on total mining cost is quantified by sensitivity analysis. A case study is implemented to demonstrate the developed model.

Keywords

• Mine production cycle
• Rock fragmentation
• Cost optimization
• Evolutionary algorithm
• Sensitivity analysis