Project Information
- Ore Deposit: Carlin-type, Epithermal, Orogenic gold, Porphyry, Tailings, VMS
- Commodity: Copper, Gold
- Location: Worldwide
- Project Status: Active
- Start Date: 2017
MDRU’s Geometallurgy Initiative will develop and implement a range of collaborative research opportunities, strategies, and projects with industry partners to characterise and quantify variability in orebody parameters that relate to the mining value chain. In partnership with BRIMM, we will provide the leadership required to facilitate a new era in geometallurgical research, training, and education in this rapidly developing field. We collaborate closely with the UBC NBK Mining Engineering group who have strengths in rock breakage and mine-to-mill integration.
Our approach spans and links all components of the mining value chain from exploration to tailings. We aim to improve the fundamental understanding of resource economics by integrating geology, mining, metallurgy, tailings, and environmental information to maximize the value of an orebody while minimizing technical and operational risk. This approach factors ore variability into flowsheets, infrastructure design, production, and quality forecasts over life-of-mine.
We have a “rocks first” approach with an emphasis on material characterization to establish domains and domain characteristics (e.g., mineralogical, geochemical, petrophysical, textural) that relate to mineral processing, recovery, and tailing disposal/storage. We have strengths in petrology, geochemistry, mineralogy, physical properties, alteration characterization, mineral deportment, comminution, and tailings.
The Geometallurgy Initiative has three primary focus areas:
- Getting more from core – testing and development of tools and protocols for the collection of systematic, quantitative, spatially constrained data to improve the mining value chain;
- Domain definition and characterization – interrogating existing (e.g. logging, geochemistry, RQD) and newly acquired datasets to define domains, boundaries, relationships and indices to inform mining value chain decision-making; and
- Geological context for mineral deportment – establish relationships between various rock parameters (and proxies) to enhance to improve comminution, mineral liberation, and recovery performance.
MDRU will exploit its traditional expertise by focusing geometallurgical efforts on porphyry copper deposits and gold deportment in gold-only and porphyry systems.
Download our Geometallurgy Initiative flyer or contact Craig Hart or Greg Dipple for more information.
Past Projects
Our most recent project identified mineralogical controls on gold recovery at Kişladağ, Turkey.
Past projects included geometallurgial and mineralogical evaluation of the Kvanefjeld alkaline complex hosted REE-U deposit in Greenland, and the giant Pebble porphyry copper deposits in Alaska.
