Gold mining and processing plants comprises a variety of steps, which have their own characteristics and operating parameters for efficiency. It is important to mention that in some circumstances the conditions needed to improve any one of these steps could be counterproductive for the enhancement of optimization in another. Consequently, an approach is therefore warranted in which conditions for each step are varied so as to get complete improvement. In this way, the number of steps, their design and interactions in many gold mine and processing operations tend to promote trial and error attempt at achieving global optimization difficult and expensive. Then, the Mine to Mill philosophy appears as a tool to increasing profitability through integration and global optimization of their mining and processing operations.
Metallurgists know that modeling and simulation yield a cost effective and easy way to successful operation and profit. For example, a gold operation can improve its profit by increasing SAG mill processing rates or a new heap leach size distribution which can improve the recovery of gold and silver. At the beginning of the gold project, the key steps in the mining and processing plant are indentified so that they can be simulated, modeled and practiced. Basically, effective control will be possible when there is appropriate characterization of the ore body, simulation and modeling of the metallurgical performance of each step, simulation of the different panoramas to get excellent performance, introduction of a strategy to obtain successful results, and measurement of the gold properties and operating conditions by employing appropriate instruments and designs.
Different engineering companies and gold operations have been focused on identifying some important parts such as blast fragmentation and measurement of size distribution. In this way, some researchers have been able to develop blasting models, which are able to estimate the finest particles of the run of mine ore and its dependency on the blasting design. Many gold operations with CIP or CIL process had to face a common problem, the percentage of fine material in the comminution circuit and the effect of the blast procedure. The optimum particle size distribution for the recovery process was obtained when the blast procedure was improved.
The first years of production must be included in the model