OPTIMALMINE: slope optimal design for a paradigm shift in mining efficiency, environmental friendliness and resilience

ongoing

The European Union is currently addressing challenges related to the supply of essential raw materials that are used for clean technologies (e.g. lithium for EV batteries, copper for electrification) and everyday life (e.g. metals for iPhones). This includes policy initiatives such as the raw materials list and the Critical Raw Materials Act (European Commission, 2019) which sets 10% of the EU's annual needs for extraction as a benchmark to be reached by 2030. Reaching this target will require an increase in mining efficiency to make currently unprofitable mine deposits economically viable. Mining is responsible for around 8% of the global carbon footprint with a very large part of carbon footprint due to mining activities, hence innovations that reduce the amount of waste rock to be excavated in turn lead to substantial reductions of the overall mine carbon footprint. Topological slope optimisation solves the problem by introducing two paradigm shifts: 1. Overall steeper, hence more efficient, pit walls without compromising safety. 2. Automated pit wall design. The proposed solution focuses on a highly innovative approach for open-pit mines: excavating pit wall slopes according to their topological optimal shape instead of the established current practice of designing pit walls of constant inclination within each rock layer. The methodology developed by Prof. Utili (UNEW) finds the optimal non-planar slope geometry for a specified target Factor of Safety (FoS), which is significantly steeper than any planar one (see Figure 1). Topological slope optimisation has the potential to change the open pit mining industry: if this methodology was adopted by 50% of >5,000 mines worldwide and considering the average financial and environmental gains obtained from five mine case studies published in peer-reviewed mining journals leads to the following financial estimates: €6.5B/year of direct savings from less rock volume excavated and 200M tonnes/year of CO2eq emi