Production Strategy Optimization of Integrated Exploitation for Multiple Deposits Considering Carbon Quota

Nowadays, the mining industry actively advocates and practices the concept of green and integrated exploitation to realize the sustainable development of resources with low-carbon emissions. The certain carbon quota for mining companies limits the production capacity and resource utilization efficiency. The integrated exploitation of multiple deposits could coordinate resource allocation and operation facilities, which would reduce capital expenditure and operating costs for the mining company from a systematic perspective. In this condition, some deposits located nearby could be treated as one entity to make plans and optimize. An optimization framework is proposed based on the analysis of the characteristics and advantages of integrated exploitation. A new mathematical programming model is presented to optimize production capacity and extracted ore grade for each deposit considering constraints of maximum and minimum mining capacity, extracted ore grade and concentrated ore grade requirement, and metal output target, which has a significant influence on the economic benefit and resource utilization rate for a mining company. The model is verified using the data collected from three deposits of a gold mining company in China to demonstrate its ability to optimize the allocation of production capacity and improve the technical and economic effect of mining under the limitation of carbon quota. The sensitivity analysis of some key parameters is carried out to generate a series of integrated exploitation schemes under different production and operation conditions, which is useful for the mining company to make decisions in different situations.