Valuation of Uncertainty in Geometallurgical Process Optimisation


Valuation of Uncertainty in Geometallurgical Process Optimisation

van den Boogaart, K. G.; Tolosana Delgado, R.

Geometallurgical parameters such as block models and process response models always come with a certain (geo-)statistical uncertainty. Geometallurgical optimisation often treats these model values as if they were certain. With easy to understand model examples we demonstrate the economic effect of ignoring the uncertainty. Our stochastic optimisation method, taking it into account, uniformly outperforms the best deterministic approach, often substantially. As the method is fully aware of the underlying model uncertainty, it can quantify the value of certainty and information and thus assign economic values to geometallurgical exploration and geometallurgical processing testwork. In this way the geometallurgist can objectively justify detailed exploration and processing experiments, by computing the effect on the expected NPV upfront.

Keywords: Geometallurgy; Uncertainty; Geostatistics

  • Lecture (Conference)
    Process Mineralogy 2017, 20.-22.03.2017, Cape Town, South Africa
  • Open Access Logo Contribution to proceedings
    Process Mineralogy 2017, 20.-22.03.2017, Cape Town, Sourth Africa

Permalink: https://www.hzdr.de/publications/Publ-24154
Publ.-Id: 24154