Exploration
Babak Sohrabian; Erhan Tercan
Abstract
Mineral Resources have commonly been estimated through the kriging method that assigns weights to the samples based on variogram distance to the estimation point without considering their values. More robust estimators such as spatial copulas are promising tools because they consider both distance ...
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Mineral Resources have commonly been estimated through the kriging method that assigns weights to the samples based on variogram distance to the estimation point without considering their values. More robust estimators such as spatial copulas are promising tools because they consider both distance and sample values in determining weights. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Gaussian copulas (GC) by estimating the copper grade values in the Sungun porphyry copper deposit located in Iran. Performance of the method was compared to ordinary kriging (OK) and indicator kriging (IK) by running the Jackknife test of cross-validation. The metrics used in measuring performance of the methods are global accuracy and precision of the distribution of the estimates, error statistics, and variability for globally accurate and precise estimates. The case study shows advantages of GC over OK and IK by producing globally accurate and precise estimates with acceptable error statistics and variability.
Mohammad Rezaei; Milad Ghasemi
Abstract
Resource estimation and determining the grade distribution is one of the most important stages in planning and designing the open-pit and underground mines. In this work, a new mythology is used for resource estimation of the Angouran underground mine based on the optimized integration of the indicator ...
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Resource estimation and determining the grade distribution is one of the most important stages in planning and designing the open-pit and underground mines. In this work, a new mythology is used for resource estimation of the Angouran underground mine based on the optimized integration of the indicator kriging (IK), simple kriging (SK), and inverse distance weighted (IDW) methods. For this purpose, waste blocks are first removed from the block model using the IK method. Then the amount of mineral resource is estimated using the SK and IDW methods. Indeed, variograms are developed to estimate the grade of zinc minerals in the three used methods. Variograms analysis in three directions prove that the studied resource is anisotropic. Also the validation results confirm that the correlation coefficients between the measured and estimated zinc values by the SK and IDW methods equal to 0.76 and 0.75, respectively. Knowing this satisfactory result, a 3D model of the resource is prepared using the IK method, in which the ore and waste sections of the Angouran underground mine are separated definitely. According to the above methodology, the calculated resource of the Angouran underground mine using the SK method is achieved 1373962.5 tons with an average grade of 30.11%, whereas the estimated amount of this resource is attained 1349325 tons with an average grade of 31.88% using the IDW approach. The verification results show that the suggested methodology based on the optimized integration of the IK, SK, and IDW methods can be successfully applied for resource modeling and grade estimating of the Angouran underground mine.
Shah H. Shafayi; F. Mohammad Torab
Abstract
The Aynak copper deposit is the most important strata-bound copper reserve in Afghanistan. The main purpose of this work is the ore deposit boundary modification and reserve estimation of the Aynak central copper deposit using the geostatistical methods. The ordinary kiging (OK), indicator kriging (IK) ...
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The Aynak copper deposit is the most important strata-bound copper reserve in Afghanistan. The main purpose of this work is the ore deposit boundary modification and reserve estimation of the Aynak central copper deposit using the geostatistical methods. The ordinary kiging (OK), indicator kriging (IK) and sequential indicator simulation (SIS) methods were used to modify the optimum ore deposit boundary and ore reserve estimation. Then the results, accuracy and efficiency of these three methods are compared. Before the ore reserve estimation, the pre-processing, statistical and geostatistical analysis of the sampled data are performed. For a precise estimation process, it is necessary to modify the optimum ore body boundary as an estimation space. Therefore, the IK and SIS methods are applied to revise the conventional ore deposit boundary and estimation space. At the first stage, the ore body wireframe and solid model are obtained using the conventional cross-section method. The block model is created covering the mineralization space of the ore body, and firstly constrained by the conventional model (solid model). Consequently, the ore body model is adapted and bounded using the IK and SIS geostatistical methods. Finally, the log-kriging method that is basically unbiased and guarantees the minimum estimation error is used to estimate the Cu concentration in each block, and after back-transformation, the grade-tonnage curves are plotted. The total tonnage of the deposit is calculated based on different cut-off grades. Assuming the cut-off grade of 0.2% for Cu, the tonnage of ore reserve based on the conventional OK method, IK method, and SIS constrained ore body model are estimated as 453.4, 459.1, and 467.7 million tons with an average grade of 1.077%, 1.08%, and 1.05%, respectively. The proximity of the obtained reserve estimation results using different implemented methodologies is due to the low-grade variability and genetical regularity in the Aynak staratabound copper deposit and guarantees the accuracy of the results obtained in the ore reserve evaluation.
