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Simulation-based approach to study the effect of the ore-grade decline on the production of gold

Abstract:

With the rush of metal consumption in the last decades, a growing concern has emerged about the decline of ore grades and the consequent increase of energy in the production of metals. When no more rich deposits would be available, metals would be extracted from common rocks. Gold is a precious metal that is widely used in a variety of applications since pieces of jewelry until electronic circuits. To decrease the effects of global warming, it would be necessary to spread the use of renewable energy technologies. This would cause the consumption of more metals, and gold would not be the exception. In this paper, we studied the effect of the ore-grade decline on the production of gold through a computational model developed in HSC software. We used the composition of Thanatia, a state of mineral dispersion into the Earth´s crust, as a common rock from which gold would be produced. With our model, it was verified that the specific energy would experience an exponential growth while the ore-grade decreases. Besides, its environmental impact was estimated due to the electricity consumption in the processes. Our approach, with a mineral processing model developed in HSC Sim, assures a rigorous evaluation of the environmental impact associated to the gold production since the whole production process is well known and not assumed or simplified as currently done in most LCA analyses.