Abstract

For decades, open-pit mine planning algorithms have incorporated geological uncertainty and other elements or characteristics for increasingly realistic representations. Among these complexities is the detailing of downstream processes that occur inside processing plants. Previous studies have demonstrated that the strategic mine plan and mineral concentrator design are coupled, and should therefore be optimized simultaneously within the same quantitative framework. However, existing frameworks offer limited representation of operational modes. This work demonstrates an approach to resolving this gap, in an optimization based on a parallelized Variable Neighborhood Descent (VND). The resulting algorithm embeds mass-balancing linear programming (LP) using a Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition. A case study of a Zn-Pb deposit is presented to show the performance reached.