Document Type : Original Research Paper
Authors
- Marco Antonio Cotrina-Teatino 1
- Jairo Jhonatan Marquina-Araujo 1
- Jose Nestor Mamani-Quispe 2
- Jorge Chira-Fernandez 3
- Cesar De la cruz-Poma 3
- Solio Marino Arango-Retamozo 1
1 Department of Mining Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Trujillo, Trujillo, Peru
2 Faculty of Chemical Engineering, National University of the Altiplano of Puno, Puno, Peru
3 Dirección de Recursos Minerales y Energéticos, INGEMMET, Lima, Peru
Abstract
The sustained increase in mining waste, particularly in the form of tailings, poses a significant environmental and economic challenge, especially in contexts where these deposits retain residual metal content. This study assessed the gold potential of Tailings Deposit I at La Cienega (Peru) by integrating geostatistical estimation and machine learning models optimized through metaheuristic algorithms. The methodology involved geochemical characterization, three-dimensional estimation using Ordinary Kriging (OK) as a geostatistical method, and prediction of gold grades through three models: XGBoost optimized with Particle Swarm Optimization (XGB+PSO), Support Vector Regression with Genetic Algorithm (SVR+GA), and Random Forest optimized using Ant Colony Optimization (RF+ACO). Estimates were validated using Leave-One-Out cross-validation and performance metrics including RMSE, MAE, Bias, and correlation coefficient (R). The RF+ACO model achieved an RMSE of 0.32 ppm, MAE of 0.24 ppm, Bias of 0.006, and an R value of 0.56. Average predicted grades ranged from 1.14 to 1.33 ppm, with estimated gold contents between 981.00 and 1,147.12 ounces, while OK yielded 1,028.77 ounces at an average grade of 1.19 ppm. These findings suggest that properly optimized machine learning models can provide reasonable estimates of metal content in tailings, particularly in settings characterized by high spatial heterogeneity and limited geological continuity.
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