Posted on July 04, 2000 at 03:02:48:

In Reply to: BLENDING SOFTWARE posted by Leigh PASKIN on February 09, 2000 at 19:04:27:

The interesting commercial solution for in-pit blending bulk material can be found within the DATAMINE mining package.

There is a scheduling module by the name of ACHIEVE that is used for advancing the pit with regard to control user defined quality parameters. This is a linear programming based module but provides the real 3-D pit advance with user defined dependencies.

(see: http://www.datamine.co.uk)

Also look for the new Earthworks Corp. product: NVP Scheduler for pit optimisation with the long term scheduling module based on the dynamic programming algorithm.

(see: http://www.earthworks.com.au)

These are widely known solutions for opencast mining and should be helpful for you. ■

Posted on May 03, 2000 at 15:08:00:

In Reply to: BLENDING SOFTWARE posted by Leigh PASKIN on February 09, 2000 at 19:04:27:

Dear Mr. Paskin,

I have developed a number of material handling simulation models that incorporate stockpile blending (Escondida, PTFI Grasberg, Cleveland Cliffs Northshore Mine). I typically use a simulation language (Siman, ARENA, GPSH …) and can develop a sophisticated blending model including your requirements within a couple days. I have yet to find an off the shelf package that handles blending well. There are always issues unique to each operation that require customization.

If it is just a one off model that you need to run then almost any simulation language will work. If you intend to use this model in operations on a hourly/daily basis then a language that can interface with your DCS and can develop user-friendly interfaces is better, ARENA is a good choice.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Troy Ball

Agra Simons ■

Posted on April 18, 2000 at 05:00:24:

In Reply to: BLENDING SOFTWARE posted by Leigh PASKIN on February 09, 2000 at 19:04:27:

Dear Mr. Paskin,

we are a young spinoff company from the university of

Erlangen/Nuremberg (Germany), department for

environmental process engineering & recycling

(www.uvt.uni-erlangen.de), engaged in the field of

process simulation tools for solids.

In a project for the german coal mining industry we

included a blending calculation into our simulation

of coal preparation.

Input data comes from different

surge bins (different qualities of coal) or by

manual input data. For the

blending calculation determination of qualities

for the mixed coal is needed (like mass, ash, sulfide,

moisture, prefered bins etc.) for one or more

products.

The calculation optimizes with a special

algorithm the best mixture with the given

paramters.

Maybe we could adapt this tool to your problem.

For more information please get in contact with

us:

christian.gerhart@prosper-online.de

or

http://www.prosper-online.de

Yours sincerely

C. Gerhart ■