VIST Group, Moscow, Russia:
A. G. Rylnikov, Head of a School, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, rylnikov@vistgroup.ru

North Ural Gold, Krasnoturinsk, Russia:
A. N. Novikov, Chief Executive Officer

The application of the modern automated system to control the quality of ore fed to processing enables reduction in operating expenditures and improvement of marketable product quality. Technically, it is more feasible to control qualitative characteristics of ore flow in opencast mining by means of satellite navigation and information system as operating opencast mines already have installed basic blocks of such systems. The automated quality stabilization system for ore flows has been introduced in Vorontsovsky opencast gold mine of North Ural Gold Company. The idea of having the wanted ore quality rests upon formation of ore flows based on quality of ore from individual extraction block, predicted using permanently updated block model of ore deposit and supervising the processes of drilling, breakage and haulage of ore; the number of ore flows and ore blending regimes are governed by the characteristics and location of faces, as well as the number and volume of tipping points in an open pit mine. The article analyzes the prospects for automated ore flow quality control systems in underground mining. For the moment, separate elements of such systems have been trialed in underground mines. The difficulty is connected with the multi-stage formation of ore quality indexes, considering quality indexes of ore from separate extraction units (chambers, strips) and with the sequential merging of such flows via the system of ore passes into the common ore flow mine network.
The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Grant No. 14-17-00050.

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