Ultimate Pit Limits using Maximum Flow Algorithm Ford and Fulkerson: The Case of Study of North Mutoshi Project, DRC

The determination of an ultimate pit limit of an open-pit mine is an important part of the planning of any mine. This is a phase which is related to the pit optimisation. New tools to solve mathematical programming problems have emerged in recent times prompting researchers to revisit the determination of ultimate open pit limits. Application of these tools such as Python could result in considerable savings in the cost of technical computing for mining companies in this study, a proposed algorithm for Ford and Fulkerson model was developed and coded in Python programming environment to solve the ultimate pit problem and the results are compared to the Lerchs-Grossman algorithm. The research demonstrated that the Ford and Fulkerson model run in Python, can be effectively used to find an ultimate pit limit in 3-dimensions through 2-dimension cross-sections. The ultimate pit limits obtained using the Ford and Fulkerson algorithm programmed in Python found optimal pit design in record time. To validate the proposed Ford and Fulkerson model, a numerical result comparison was done against the best-known LG. The FFA determines the ultimate pit limit by finding the maximum net value from blocks extracted which represent the minimum cuts. This research provides a framework for running the Ford and Fulkerson Algorithm to the mining domain using Python along with a brief description of the method and its application to a real copper project to exemplify its use. The optimum pit values obtained from the FFA and the LG are USD 881 870 000 and USD 880 210 100, respectively. These results gave the adaptation model with the regression of 99,8 % and the net maximum value of USD 891 949 000 compared to the FFA model using python Although the proposed Ford and Fulkerson algorithm demonstrated its efficiency and applicability to deal with the ultimate pit limits.