This Metal Production Estimator App allows the user to take a Resource or Reserve estimate and conceptualize a potential production scenario. This would use a user defined mine life to determine the processing rate and annual metal production. The App also estimates the insitu rock value and total contained metal in the Mineral Reserve.
INPUTS
-
Input the Resource tonnage.
-
Reserve-to-Resource Factor: is an estimate of the percentage change in Resource that convert to Reserves.
-
Grade Factor: The Reserve can have a higher or lower grade than the Resource.
-
RESERVE tonnage and grades: this incorporates the two factors described above,
-
Select Metals of Interest from the toggles.
-
User can modify metal prices.
-
User can modify process recoveries.
-
Mine Life: input a proposed mien life in years
OUTPUTS
-
The Insitu Rock Value is based on the metal prices and grades without any recovery or payable factors.
-
Annual and daily processing rates are based on the estimated mine life.
-
Annual metal production is based on the Insitu Metal x % Recovery / Mine Life.
Example Scenario
Say you have a gold deposit with a Resource of 50 Mt with Au grade of 1.5 g/t and Ag grade of 20 g/t. What might this deposit produce?
Here's how to check this.
Lets say we can convert 80% of the Resource into mineable Reserve by pulling the better material we can bump the grade by 20%. So the Reserve would now be 40 Mt at 1.8 g/t and 24 g/t respectively. This would equate to an insitu rock value of about $326/tonne and 2.3 million ounces of gold insitu.
We expect a heap leach recovery of 75% on gold and 60% on silver.
If we target a 10 year mine life, we need an ore processing rate of 4 Mt/year (or about 11,000 tpd). That's a fairly big operation. This processing rate equates to metal production of 173,000 oz gold per year and 1.85 Moz of silver. This size deposit may have interest for a mid-tier producer.
