K. K. Kaysenov, A. A. Kurmankozhaeva                                             GB 5

Almaty, Kazakhstan                                                                                                                                                                   

 

EFFICIENCY OF THE RATIONAL USAGE

OF THE OFF BALANCE AND LOST ORES

ON THE DEPOSITS OF KAZAKHSTAN

 

 

In the visible future on the all deposits of the non-ferrous metallurgy of the country the technological situation will become more complex due to decreasing balance reserves of the ore and continuously increasing the depth of the mining level. At the same time the mining production will inevitably face up with the increase of the effect of the rock pressure on general excavations, first workings and stopping excavations what will lead to increasing losses of the balance reserves in the ore blocks left for their saving and maintenance. The most important factor accelerating a premature closing of deposits is uncontrolled natural phenomenon – decrease of the content of the minerals in the ore and growth of the reserves losses from depth mining.

 

At present time it is possible to state with more probability that at the latest than 15-20 years due to complete extraction of the ore reserves balance, the deposits of Zhezkazagan, Maleevsky, Tishinsky and other deposits of non-ferrous metal will be closed, as for instance - Achisaysky and Mirgalimsky deposits some time ago famous all over the world. In that case hundred thousands of workers and all population employees in different areas of the infrastructure of industrial cities inevitably will lose employment what will lead to an acute social tension and poverty of more than 400 thousands of population. However a prevention from such a situation can be found by developing and implementing progressive technologies and machinery allowing to efficiently use the off balance poor and lost rich ores. New research work is seeking how to provide a longer period of exploiting active deposits with large reserves  of the off balance and lost ores. Only in the Zhezkazgan copper massive they consist of more than one milliard of tons plus enormous quantities of rich ores left in the exploitation  process as lost ores representing a volume of up to 40 % from the whole balance reserves of the mine field.

 

Therefore the prevention of industrial cities before an inevitable death is a very serious and important problem for the whole state both in industrial and social areas.

 

At present time technologies of copper production directly on the places of the mining of ores and technology of drilling and blasting works are being elaborated. Technology of the copper production directly on places of the off balance ores exploitation, new boring machinery and technology for blasting wells and bore-holes with the use of concentrated charges of explosive and wave curtain as their stemming are being developed for improving exploitation conditions in the deposits. New boring shell for boring wells of alternating section and parabolic wave reflector as well as technology of the subterranean block lixiviation are being elaborated. Elaboration of the copper production directly on places where the off balance ores exploitation takes place with the help of new technical means applying boring shell of wells of alternating section and wave curtain represent an effective approach which is being implemented into the exploitation practice. By implementing the new means the production costs decrease by 30% in comparison with traditional methods. Processing of the off balance ores by the method of subterranean block lixiviation is performed three times cheaper than by the traditional processing method. Therefore with equal production costs volumes of the exploited off balance ores might be increased because their processing is many times cheaper than the processing   of the balance ores.

Under such conditions the period of the efficient exploitability of Zhezkazgan deposits might be prolonged for many years.

 

The main advantage of this project is to prolong the life of many deposits and by this way to provide social wealth to industrial cities. Elaborated technologies of the boring explosion works, production of non-ferrous and precious metals directly on places of ores exploitation might be implemented in all the ore deposits of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

 

The project deals with realizing a complex of problems. There is a task to change   the traditional drilling and blasting technology and to develop completely new technology of well-boring allocating in them concentrated explosives for the even small crushing of the exploited ore. In the opposite case the creation of the processing technology with the use of hydrometallurgical methods will face difficulties. In the group explosion of the fan wells the quantity of explosives allocated in them along their length should be increased proportionally in accordance with the continual uninterrupted increase of the distance between fan wells along their length. This might be achieved if all fan wells will be bored with a continually increasing diameter along their length. But such a way of boring wells is practically impossible. For realizing the mentioned task the only way remains consisting in well-boring on the certain lots to create in them holes with the increased diameter in the way of spherical open pits for the allocation of required quantities of explosive substances, i.e. fan drilling should be performed with the alternating section. Use of the blast holes of the alternating section will allow to significantly decrease the volume of the boring works and to provide even crushing while dislodging the ore; that will considerably decrease net cost for exploiting one ton of the ore. There are backlogs that envisage to reject of the traditional technology of the explosion of the wells and bore-holes, pit mouths of which are closed with the stemming (plugs) made from the wet clay and sand. In this method explosive energy is lost by 30%. Envisaged technology substituting the old one by a new one with the wave curtains (made from plastic and strengthening the blast waves of the explosion in the wells or boreholes by 20-25%) will lead to the decrease of explosives consumption.

 

Problems of the rational forming and optimal classification of various off balance and lost ores in complex structured deposits are very important from both ecological and economical points of view.

 

Our recommended method of the economical evaluation of the classification parameters for the off balance and lost ores is based on the principle of the multicriteria optimisation, providing differentiation and complexity of evaluation results. Implementation of this method allows to consequently apply non-equivalent criteria what makes it possible to simplify the complex interrelations of indicators and economical uncertainties in the decision-making process.

 

Multicriterial economical estimation is an alternating maximisation of partial criteria and choice of the concessions dimension. Strategy of the economical estimation is oriented to achieve the given goal and to find the best efficiency criterion consisting of the sum of partial criteria ranged by significance.

 

The essence of the method of the economical estimation is in the substantiation of several rational partial criteria allowing to optimise parameters for separating the off balance and lost ores in the course of the mining process.  Based on principles of the multicriterial optimisation and on peculiarities of forming different kinds of the off balance and man- caused waste ore masses during the exploitation process as well as in accordance with the concept of a differentiated approach to their estimation as partial criteria applicability of the following economical criteria should be considered: profit from the realisation of raw materials; sum of the normalised costs and losses from the realisation of the raw materials; internal rate of profits which is defined by comparison of sizes of discounted profits and costs of the production; complex, including natural and economical aspects  of the ecological technical decisions, representing sizes of the dynamic income on the unit of the gross product. These above mentioned four criteria as partial criteria of the general multicriterial estimation are parts of the whole generalised complex-vector criterion-playing role of the target function of the optimization. Quantitative developing of the one vector criterion for the multicriterial economical estimation is realised on the basis of identifying the inter-relation of the abovementioned partial criteria that have been maximised in the course of finding the common optimum with the help of target function (expressed as a complex vector criterion).

 

The first economic criterion is the profit from realisation of the mining off balance and man-caused lost ores conditions efficiency from the point of view of obtaining the maximum profit due to improving productional, technical, organisational and other aspects of the development of the production processes of the mining; it belongs to economical criteria. In the local system - without any respect to the development of the process of the transition to market economy - under the currently existing tax system and incomes distribution, the gross profit can not serve as a sufficient indicator of the effectiveness of the plants work. The usage of it for estimating the investment efficiency, underestimation of terms to obtain profit as well as subjectivity of the choice of the pay-off periods would lead to unreliable conclusions and overestimated results. Gaining the maximum profit cannot become the main goal of the enterprise because the first objective is to provide its vital capacity under conditions of competition and dynamics of the demand and supply. The actual aim of the enterprise consists in forming the minimal value of the enterprise funds. The same shortcoming has another criterion – the profitability index expressing the ratio of the profit in comparison with total costs.

 

The second economical criterion - internal rate of return - allows to avoid necessity to choose coefficients of discounting and to prevent from mistakes related with these coefficients, usage of the capital costs, losses and cash inflows in the way of summing depreciating charges and profit got after tax deduction with taking into account additional payments and benefits. Identification of its value is performed by integrative solving of the equations where difference between discounted profits and costs (NPV) equals zero:

 

åRV cash inflows - åPV cash outflows = 0                       (1)

 

where: åRV cash inflows  - normalised (to the present moment of time) sum of the positive values of the cash flow;

åPV cash outflows - normalised (to the present moment of time) sum of the negative values of cash flow.

 

The acceptability of this important criterion is also related with certain difficulties i.e. 1) during the solving of the above-stated equation some times might appear multiple roots what is related to the decrease of the market price on the product or to great investments into production widening or to the costs for the complete extraction of the ore bodies; 2) in order to take a decision about the investment, it is anyway necessary to compare the calculated value of RR to the normative value of the percentage rate of income (approved by the subject) etc.

 

The analysis of the above-mentioned criteria acceptability results in the following recognition: the dimension of the profit does not respond to modern market conditions for taking it as a criterion of the economical efficiency of the activity of the production. Economical criteria - internal rate of return and normalised costs - as the main components of economical consequences require respective reorganisations applied to the particulars of market requirements from the point of view of the complete ores extraction.

 

The fourth natural complex criterion responds more objectively to the modern requirements of the effectiveness of the production development; as to the significance and importance does not yield to other well-known economical criteria.

 

For substantiation of the first economical criterion some positions of the abovementioned criterion are used, that is known abroad as internal rate of return (IRR) which in essence belongs to general discounting methods. The following analogies are accepted: “The sum of positive values of cash flow (åPVдoх) “ – summary compensating economic effect as the  income obtained due to increasing completeness and quality of the ore extraction. “The sum of negative values of cash flow (åPVрас)” – summary economical harm caused by losses of value of the ore reserves leading to devaluation of common costs including investment, credit and other investments. Differing from the values of åPVдoх and åPVрас initial values on recommended method (used in the method of internal rate of return - IRR) are realised in the present time through discounting coefficients (ωi).

 

On the basis of abovementioned results of analysis and on the basis of the estimation of acceptability of the known economical criteria with taking into account peculiarities of the off balance ores elaboration in the recommended method following rational criteria are accepted: economical criterion defined as sum of the economical consequences caused by mining and realisation of the off balance and lost ores  (F(Этт)) and complex natural criterion as sum of the extracted values coming from off balance and lost ores with regard to the significance of their impact on the efficiency  of the ore exploitation (FЦИЦ)).

 

 

The generalised complex criterion of the multicriterial optimization of the forming off balance and lost ores and the parameters of their division during the mining process with regard to chosen two partial criteria is represented as:

 

                                     (2)

 

As estimation criterion of the optimised forming and division of the off balance ores the maximum complex-vector sum of the economical criteria is accepted. It is obtained due to increasing the efficiency and completeness of extraction of the deposit reserves and due to reducing the level of harm of the extracted value, caused by losses and impoverishing of the ore during the mining process.

 

The task of the economical estimation using the chosen criterion in this case comes to the consequent estimation and maximisation of separate partial scalar criteria:               

 

Estimation SupK1(Дтт)=Ki(X);             Дтт Î   Дтт

Estimation SupK2(ЦИK)=Kj(X(N));     ЦИЦ Î   ЦИЦ                      (3)

 

The function Ki(X) usually is continuously differentiated on X, and the function Kj(X(N)) is continuous uninterrupted on the sum of arguments. Possible maximum values of these chosen criteria appear as the result of solving these tasks. They are optimal as to given consequences of partial criteria.

 

The first economical criterion - defined as sum of economical consequences caused by the mining process and realisation of the types of the off balance and lost ores - stipulates all exploitation, investment and current costs and losses originated by an effective development of the new technologies and decisions about their implementation. Though this criterion is commonly known as the value criterion  in relation with market requirements its definition needs a new approach and market estimation. Estimation of the definition of this partial criterion concludes as a sum of economical approaches (effects) resulting from the reduction of the costs of the optimal division of the off balance ores types. It looks like:

                                                       (4)

             

under limitation functions:

 

             k

            å qiтт × Цiтт    ®           max                                                                                    (5)                                                                        

            i=1

             k

            å qiтт × Ciтт    ®           min;  (qiтт>0)                                                                                                                              

            i=1

 

where: qiттquantity of the  i-th off balance ore (in tons); Цiтт, Ciтт -  market price and full net cost of the i-th type of the off balance ore. During the extraction of the ores deposits on the extraction contour of the ore bodies as a rule, there is a loss of their certain part which is inevitable under existing systems and technologies of the deposit exploitation. This lost part of the reserves of the rich ore appearing in the course of the process of the extraction , sorting, transportation and ultimate forming of the ore types of the  by their economical content represents the economical consequence as a lost extracted value. Therefore the second complex natural criterion established to achieve the optimum of the lost part of the value extracted as a result of the mining process and of the realization of different ore types.

 

Estimation of this complex natural criterion - defined as summary lost value - is expressed by means of the size of losses of the part of the rich types ores (Пм) and degree of the significance of their impact on the exploitation efficiency (DЗттп) and it is given by:

           

F(ЦИЦ)=å (Цттп +DЗттп)                                                       (6)

                         i

Hence   

                      

               (7)           

                                                                                                                                      

where ai  - coefficient on limitations to the technical conditions of the quality (appropr.units).

 

            Degree of significance of economical consequences of the lost part of the extracted value on the efficiency of the mining process is calculated by means of the formula:

           

                                        (8)

                       

 

 

Size of the lost part of metal on all K – types of the ore during their exploitation, sorting, transportation and shipment is defined by direct metering.

As it follows from estimations (4) – (8), the optimal forming and sorting of the off balance and lost ores types during their exploitation is achieved under the conditions

F(Дтт) ® max

F(ЦИЦ) ®min                                                                     (9)

 

The solution of the common task of the optimal forming of the off balance and lost ores could be presented as finding the global optimum in the multitude of the optimal solutions of the task using the linear programming under concrete variants of elements of the given matrix within limits of the field defined by normative technical conditions given by the consumers.

 

The method of the optimal sorting of the off balance and lost ores is recommended to be used when substantiating effective technologies of the forming of different kinds of raw materials, as well as technological solutions, oriented to increase the completeness and quality of the reserves extraction under conditions for exploiting polytype and multi-component complex deposits.