01 / Allocation
Plant allocation
Decide which mined material feeds which processing plant and process flow line in every period of the life of mine.
Customer case study · Coal · Life of mine
Multi-Plant and Life of Mine Optimisation Software
BlendOpt is a configurable optimisation platform for mining value chains. Configured for multi-plant and life-of-mine planning, it takes the life-of-mine schedule as an input and decides which ROM material, traced to its pit, strip, bench and block, goes to which processing plant and process flow line, and which products it becomes, so the operation earns the highest NPV over the life of mine.
Customer result39-year life-of-mine plan
Powered by BlendOpt
Outcome
+18% NPV
Over life of mine, like for like, against the customer’s existing Xpac plan for multiple processing plants.
Optimised plans500+
Data fields17M+
Insights in< 3 weeks
Coal · multiple processing plantsCase study below
What BlendOpt optimises
What BlendOpt optimises across multiple plants and the life of mine
Plant, wash, product, logistics and sales decisions are optimised together across the whole schedule, with every decision traceable back to the block it came from.
02 / Processing
Processing and wash decisions
Choose primary and secondary processing decisions for every plant, with outputs the planning team can read and act on.
03 / Quality
Product quality and pricing
Meet minimum and maximum quality tolerances for every product while accounting for price penalties, quality adjustments and base price forecasts.
04 / Logistics
Logistics and sales contracts
Include rail limits, rail and port costs and sales contract conditions, so each plan is valued at the point of sale.
05 / Geomet
Geometallurgical plant models
Build plant factors and yield calculations into the model so each plant’s output reflects the material it is fed.
06 / Scenarios
Scenario and sensitivity analysis
Run hundreds of optimised plans to test prices, markets and operating costs before committing to a production strategy.
Customer results
Multi-plant and life of mine optimisation results
Results BlendOpt customers have measured against their existing plans, from life-of-mine NPV to plant capacity and product quality.
+18% NPV
over life of mine, like for like, against the customer’s existing Xpac plan
Read the case study below →
CHPP bottleneck removed
on a value basis, avoiding tens of millions of dollars in capacity upgrade capital
Removing a CHPP bottleneck without capex →
35% → <5%
coal quality specification violations across a five-year plan
Coal quality consistency case study →
The whole value chain
Multiple plants in the context of the whole value chain
Sending material to one plant rather than another changes the products that can be made, what they are worth and what it costs to move them to market.
BlendOpt takes the mine schedule as an input and models every processing plant, logistics and sales contracts together, so each allocation decision is valued by its effect on life of mine NPV. See how this works for multi-mine optimisation, integrated mine planning and scheduling, coal blending and pit-to-port optimisation for metals mining.
Multi-plant value chainBlock to product, traceable.
BlendOpt model
- Mine planpit, strip & block
- Plantswash & flow lines
- Productsquality & price
- Logisticsrail & port
- Marketsales contracts
Optimisation objective
Maximise life-of-mine NPV
Each allocation decision is valued by its effect on NPV, and traceable from bench, block and mining date to plant feed, process flow line and final product.
Customer case study · Coal
Case study
Multi-plant life-of-mine planning
+18% NPV over life of mine, like for like
A coal operation with multiple processing plants used BlendOpt to optimise the plant, product and sales decisions in its 39-year life of mine plan against a like-for-like baseline of its existing Xpac schedule.
- +18%LOM NPV, like for like
- +13%profit potential, export markets
- 30×run-time improvement
Feasibility analysis
See the value unlocked →
Contract violations found
The existing baseline plan violated contract conditions for energy, sulphur and ash on some of the customer’s products.
Full case study
PDF
Download the case studyMulti-plant life-of-mine optimisation (PDF)
The challenge, solution and value unlocked for a multi-plant, 39-year life-of-mine plan, as a PDF.
Key findings
- Contract violations found in existing plans
- Price sensitivity informed production strategy
- Over 500 optimised plans against defined scenarios
- Full traceability from block to final product
01
The challenge
BlendOpt was used by a customer to solve a non-linear optimisation problem with a number of complex features, including multiple plants and wash decisions. The goal was to increase Net Present Value (NPV) over Life of Mine (LOM) and to greatly expand the customer’s ability to test and evaluate multiple planning scenarios.
02
The solution
To quantify NPV increases and allow a like-for-like comparison, a baseline that replicated the LOM plan modelled and scheduled in Xpac was established within the BlendOpt model.
BlendOpt’s combination of advanced auto-scheduling, optimisation and AI algorithms was used to solve the customer’s complex mining value-chain problem, rapidly and simultaneously considering many thousands of value-chain planning decisions to deliver strategic and operational directives.
The problem was substantial, and involved importing 39 years of LOM Xpac planning data, including mining dates, tonnages, bench, pit, strip and block origins, and multiple quality parameters. Planning outputs were generated per annum and included projected product tonnages, qualities, revenue and logistics costs.
The customer required full traceability of bench, block and mining date to specific plant feed, process flow line and final product within BlendOpt’s analytics. Process decisions generated by the BlendOpt optimiser needed to be easy to interpret and act on, for primary and secondary processing and for every plant.
The problem had a substantial number of constraints:
- multiple minimum and maximum quality tolerances for ash, CV, sulphur and volatiles for each product
- annual maximum rail for export products
- beneficiation discard and reject penalties
- metallurgical product volume discounts
- many blend constraints for bench to product material.
Products had to adhere to quality tolerances, price penalties, CV adjustments and base price forecasts for eight coal product categories. The problem also incorporated sales contracts and the costs of rail and port operations.
In addition, a complex Geomet model was built within the BlendOpt application, incorporating multiple plant factors, hundreds of equation calculations using the Whitten formula, and 17,370,000 data fields.
03
The value unlocked
BlendOpt discovered solutions that increased NPV by 18% over LOM under like-for-like conditions against the customer’s existing Xpac model. The expanded export markets study showed an additional 13% profit potential over LOM.
Paradyn also ran sensitivity analysis in BlendOpt, which produced the following findings for the customer:
- For one of the customer’s products, we identified the components of the product that were least sensitive to price fluctuations, meeting the customer’s need to reduce uncertainty in their operation.
- We identified optimal export portfolio sensitivities to OpEx modelling.
Paradyn conducted a feasibility analysis of the customer’s existing plans and found that the baseline plan violated contract conditions for some of the customer’s products: energy (by under 8% over the first 8 years), sulphur and ash tolerances.
The rapid scenario exploration and modelling possible in BlendOpt delivered actionable, valuable insights to the customer in under three weeks. BlendOpt imported over 17 million data fields and made 5 million optimisation decisions, and over 500 optimised plans were completed against defined scenarios. The project presented significant run-time challenges, and enhancements made to BlendOpt during the project gave a 30-fold run-time improvement.
FAQ
Multi-plant and life of mine optimisation FAQ
How BlendOpt allocates material across processing plants and measures the gain against an existing life-of-mine plan.
What is multi-plant optimisation?
Multi-plant optimisation is deciding which mined material is sent to which processing plant, and how each plant processes it, so the operation earns the most value from its whole resource. The decisions interact, because what one plant receives changes what the others can make. BlendOpt solves them together rather than plant by plant.
What is life of mine optimisation?
Life of mine optimisation looks at plant, product and sales decisions across the full mine life rather than one year at a time, with the mine schedule taken as an input and the goal of increasing NPV. In this case study BlendOpt optimised the downstream decisions in a 39-year life of mine plan and increased NPV by 18% under like-for-like conditions against the customer’s existing Xpac plan.
How is the NPV gain measured fairly?
Paradyn first replicates the customer’s existing plan inside BlendOpt as a baseline, using the same mining dates, tonnages, block origins and quality data. Optimised plans are then compared against that baseline under like-for-like conditions, so the gain comes from better decisions rather than different assumptions.
Can BlendOpt check whether an existing plan is feasible?
Yes. BlendOpt can test an existing plan against product quality tolerances and contract conditions. In this case study the feasibility analysis found that the baseline plan violated contract conditions for energy, sulphur and ash on some of the customer’s products.
Can BlendOpt work from an existing Xpac plan?
Yes. In this case study BlendOpt imported 39 years of Xpac planning data, including mining dates, tonnages, bench, pit, strip and block origins and multiple quality parameters. Results kept full traceability from bench, block and mining date to plant feed, process flow line and final product.