This paper presents the development and implementation of an innovative mixed integer programming based mathematical model for an open pit mining operation with Grade Engineering framework. Grade Engineering comprises a range of coarse-separation based pre-processing techniques that separate the desirable(i.e. high-grade) and undesirable(i.e. low-grade or uneconomic) materials and ensure the delivery of only selected quantity of high quality(or high-grade) material to energy, water, and cost-intensive processing plant. The model maximizes the net present value under a range of operational and processing constraints. Given that the proposed model is computationally complex, the authors employ a data preprocessing procedure and then evaluate the performance of the model at several practical instances using computation time, optimality gap, and the net present value as valid measures. In addition, a comparison of the proposed and traditional(without Grade Engineering) models reflects that the proposed model outperforms the traditional formulation.
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