ADDITIVITY, METALLURGICAL RECOVERY, AND GRADE

Abstract : Proper estimation of the metallurgical recovery is very important for the assessment of the economical value of a mining business. As this quantity is nonadditive, it is not possible to model its spatial variability or to perform its estimation directly. In the present work, we first recall that additivity can concern the intrinsic nature of point-support quantities, and not only the usual support effect encountered in data sets mixing samples with different sizes. Then, on a practical study based on sulphide copper data, we show when non-additive practices have an impact on the results and when they do not. Finally, we open a discussion where we explain how to proceed to assess metallurgical recovery.