The Study of Relationships Between Economical And Environmental Parameters For Sustainable Resources Management

摘要

Economic development in many parts of the world has been closely tied to mining. Mining can provide an economic basis for sustainable development and a foundation for basic infrastructure for future development. In the new economy, mining provides a comparative advantage that can be used to create sustained growth. The mining cycle, from exploration to mine rehabilitation and everything in between, has many important links to other industries and sectors, including banking, geology, transportation, remote sensing, mine construction, drilling technology, legal services and environmental management – just to name a few. Sustainable development is about economic activity in an environmental, technical and social context. Many nations and regions have created sustained growth by developing their natural resources because they have made the transition from reliance on their resources and the export of raw materials, to further processing of these resources in order to create higher value-added products and services. Net Present Value (NPV) and cut-off grade are the most important indicators for sustainable resource management. In this study, the relationship between economical and environmental considerations is presented by a developed model based on cutoff grade calculations. This paper also describes the process to determine the cutoff grade strategy used in a mining operation based on Lane’s algorithm using an optimisation factor which is iteratively calculated for every production year which dynamically adjusts the remaining reserves and thus the total life of the mine to maximise the project NPV. The main revolution in the study is using the reclamation cost per unit of production was added to Lane algorithm to obtain optimum NPV. The authors have observed an improvement of the total NPV through the strategic mine planning that not only relies on economical aspects but also minimizes adverse environmental impacts.