Copper Mine Leach Pad Design

Mining companies use a leaching process to extract copper minerals from waste material generated during mining. Leaching requires a leach pad, an area that can account for all the material that comes from an ore body. The pad must be large enough to contain the millions of tons that will be stacked on it, it must be safe, and it needs to be practical.Two leach pads were designed for a specified ore body. The two designs account for the ore body having two different copper prices: $2 and $2.50 per pound. The starting surface areas were 12.3 million square feet for the $2 design and 15.6 million square feet for the $2.50 design. The pads were designed with 12 different levels, each 20 feet tall. The $2 design will account for 2.1 million tons of material and the $2 design will account for 2.7 million tons of material. The designs included certain slope parameters that allowed for safety, and several ramps for accessibility and efficiency.