LKAB’s Kiruna Mine, located in northern Sweden, produces about 24 million tons of iron ore yearly using an underground mining method known as sublevel caving. To efficiently run the mills that process the iron ore, the mine must deliver planned quantities of three ore types. We used mixed-integer programming to schedule Kiruna’s operations, specifically, which production blocks to mine and when...

The Iron Mountain Mine Superfund Site near Redding, California, is a massive sulfide ore deposit that was mined for iron, silver, gold, copper, zinc, and pyrite intermittently for nearly 100 years. As a result, both water and air reached the sulfide deposits deep within the mountain, producing acid mine drainage consisting of sulfuric acid and heavy metals from the ore. Particularly, the draina...

presence of joints and fractures in rocks strongly influences the behavior of the rock mass by dividing the media into smaller units. these structures intensify the potential instability besides the development of sliding and rotational movements. the assumption of discontinuum media changes the whole analysis conditions in relation to the continuum analysis. acquisition of geometrical and stru...

Estimation of ore reserves is one of the most critical aspects of mining geology. The accurate assessment of the tonnage and grade of run of mine may be the difference between a healthy profitable operation and an expensive early mine closure. The first step in ore reserve estimation is to determine the boundary of ore body or ore/waste contacts. This paper presents a specific mining applicatio...

Stockpiling and blending play a major role in maintaining the quantity and quality of the raw materials fed into processing plants, especially the cement, iron ore and steel making, and coal-fired power generation industries that usually require a much uniformed feed. Due to the variable nature of such materials, they even come from the same source and the produced ores or concentrates are seld...

This case study utilizes a value of information decision framework to provide mine managers guidance regarding the purchase of ore grade scanners. LKAB’s Kiruna mine produces three types of iron ore to meet long-term contractual agreements on a monthly basis. There is a priori uncertainty regarding the ore type in any given mineable section of the orebody. In addition, there is extracted ore ty...

In Sangan iron mine nearly two million tons of low-grade iron ore has been extracted and deposited in the mining site and currently no action is made on them. On the other hand, the mining site is located in the semi-arid region and wet processing has been restricted due to water shortage. In this research, the upgradation of Sangan low-grade iron ore from mine B has been performed by dry low-i...

this paper is focused on the tactical design of steel supply chain (ssc). a general mathematical model is proposed to integrate production and transportation planning in multi-commodity ssc. the main purpose is to prepare a countrywide production and distribution plan in an ssc with three layers consisting of iron ore mines as suppliers, steel companies as producers, and subsidiary steel compan...

the determination of the ultimate pit limit (upl) is the first step in the open pit mine planning process. in this stage that parts of the mineral deposit that are economic to mine are determined. there are several mathematical, heuristic and meta-heuristic algorithms to determine upl. the optimization criterion in these algorithms is maximization of the total profit whilst satisfying the...

Due to economical and environmental issues, utilization of mineral wastes, e.g. iron ore mine tailing (IOMT), as road materials can be recommended as a sustainable alternative. In the present study, mechanical properties, as well as resistance to freezing and thawing cycles (F-T) of low plasticity clay soil stabilized with different percentages of Portland cement (0, 6, 9, 12 and 15%) and diffe...