A Hybrid Approach for Joint Simulation of Geometallurgical Variables with Inequality Constraint
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Date
2019-04-04
Authors
Abildin, Yerniyaz
Madani, Nasser
Topal, Erkan
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
MDPI
Abstract
Geometallurgical variables have a significant impact on downstream activities of mining
projects. Reliable 3D spatial modelling of these variables plays an important role in mine
planning and mineral processing, in which it can improve the overall viability of the mining
projects. This interdisciplinary paradigm involves geology, geostatistics, mineral processing and
metallurgy that creates a need for enhanced techniques of modelling. In some circumstances,
the geometallurgical responses demonstrate a decent intrinsic correlation that motivates one to
use co-estimation or co-simulation approaches rather than independent estimation or simulation.
The latter approach allows us to reproduce that dependency characteristic in the final model. In this
paper, two problems have been addressed, one is concerning the inequality constraint that might exist
among geometallurgical variables, and the second is dealing with difficulty in variogram analysis.
To alleviate the first problem, the variables can be converted to new variables free of inequality
constraint. The second problem can also be solved by taking into account the minimum/maximum
autocorrelation factors (MAF) transformation technique which allows defining a hybrid approach
of joint simulation rather than conventional method of co-simulation. A case study was carried out
for the total and acid soluble copper grades obtained from an oxide copper deposit. Firstly, these
two geometallurgical variables are transferred to the new variables without inequality constraint
and then MAF analysis is used for joint simulation and modelling. After back transformation of the
results, they are compared with traditional approaches of co-simulation, for which they showed that
the MAF methodology is able to reproduce the spatial correlation between the variables without
loss of generality while the inequality constraint is honored. The results are then post processed to
support probabilistic domaining of geometallurgical zones.
Description
Keywords
MAF, Geometallurgy, joint simulation, inequality constraint
Citation
Abildin, Y., Madani, N., Topal, E. (2019). “A Hybrid Approach for Joint Simulation of Geometallurgical Variables with Inequality Constraint”. Minerals 9(1), 24.