Geology & GeoMetallurgy

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Grade Control on a Stockpile (1 reply)

S
redcastle
3 months ago
redcastle 3 months ago

Has anyone ever had any success doing some grade control on an ore stockpile? It's pretty straightforward to sonic drill/auger and do an extensive assay program but I wanted to see if it's possible to then use that data and selectively reclaim the stockpile and try and bump the grade up a bit.

I'm working on a project that after doing a scan of the mining against the resource model looks like they had about 50% dilution 10k tons at 2g/t was mixed in with 10k tons of waste and after grab sampling the stockpile it is coming in around 1g/t average. the pile is already flat topped so I was thinking of sampling on a 3D grid, then try and map out possible grade zones and re-mine it in flitches.

Would doing this have a noticeable affect on the grade, and with the assay cost would it be worth it, or is it pretty much impossible eg. who's knows how the stockpile was dumped out, where the excavator operator dug the material etc.

Mike
3 months ago
Mike 3 months ago
Like

The method you propose would work.  And many different sampling patterns have been used.  The problem is what do you do with the material you did not take?  You may have some high grade covered by low grade.

A more complicated approach would be to recover the stockpile and seperate material below cutoff grade and send to tailings.  Some of this could be done with online assay and conveyor belts.

Alternatively use your pile sampling to give a uniform grade to processing

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