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Underground production scheduling with ventilation and refrigeration considerations

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Abstract

Underground mine production scheduling determines when, if ever, activities associated with the extraction of ore should be executed. The accumulation of heat in the mine where operators are working is a major concern. At the time of this writing, production scheduling and ventilation decisions are not made in concert. Correspondingly, heat limitations are largely ignored. Our mixed-integer program maximizes net present value subject to constraints on precedence, and mill and extraction capacities with the consideration of heat using thermodynamic principles, while affording the option of activating refrigeration to mitigate heat accumulation. In seconds to hours, depending on the problem size (up to thousands of activities and 900 daily time periods), a corresponding methodology that exploits the mathematical problem structure provides schedules that maintain a safe working environment for mine operators; optimality gaps are no more than 15% and average less than half that for otherwise-intractable instances.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge our industry partners who provided data, funding and an explanation of the scheduling problem. We thank Professor Marcos Goycoolea from the University of Adolfo Ibañez; Samuel Nichols, Kieran Lewis, Eric Smoorenberg, John Ayaburi, and Aditya Juganda from the Colorado School of Mines; and Akshay Chowdu from the South Dakota School of Mines for providing additional insights regarding model formulation. We also thank Dr. Mark Larson and Mr. Donovan Benton from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health for their constructive comments. This research has been partially funded by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health as part of the Mine Ventilation and Safety Research and Capacity Building program, contract number: 0000HCCS-2019-36404, and by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), Chile, Scholarship Program, Becas de Doctorado Nacional: 2017-21180460.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA

    Oluwaseun Ogunmodede, Gregory Bogin Jr. & Alexandra Newman

  2. Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile

    Patricio Lamas

  3. South Dakota School of Mines, Rapid City, SD, USA

    Andrea Brickey

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  1. Oluwaseun Ogunmodede
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Correspondence to Alexandra Newman.

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Ogunmodede, O., Lamas, P., Brickey, A. et al. Underground production scheduling with ventilation and refrigeration considerations. Optim Eng 23, 1677–1705 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11081-021-09682-4

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