CASPEO will be in South Africa to present a paper at the WCSB11, the 11th World Conference of Sampling and Blending. The congress will be held on May 21-23, 2024 in South Africa.

Back to South Africa to meet the sampling community

CASPEO is happy to be part ones again to this major congress on sampling. the WCSB is set to be a pivotal event in the world of sampling theory, practice, and standards.

At WCSB, academics, manufacturers, engineering firms, and practitioners from across the globe converge to explore the intricacies of sampling theory, share practical experiences, and discuss innovative solutions for achieving representative sampling. With its roots deeply embedded in the mining industry, the Theory of Sampling has evolved to encompass a wide array of industries including minerals, agriculture, food, pharmaceuticals, and environmental applications.

Guidelines to quantify measurement errors

While sampling error is increasingly considered when evaluating a deposit to quantify the uncertainty over its value, it is much less frequently considered when analysing the relevance of metallurgical test results, which are nevertheless included in the economic evaluation of the deposit. And yet, the uncertainty over the results of metallurgical tests is greater than that of deposit evaluation, since it incorporates not only errors linked to the drilling strategy and core or cuttings sampling, but also all the errors of subsampling or composite homogenization, not to mention measurement errors and intrinsic variabilities linked to the treatment process being tested.

CASPEO will present a paper aimed to review the main ore characterization procedures and metallurgical tests most often used in preliminary, pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, focusing on the various sources of uncertainty, and the means of estimating and controlling their variance.

All these errors in intermediate measurements are contributing to the overall uncertainty in test results, whether for typical parameters of the ore (such as Bond work index) or for the performance of the envisaged processing stages (such as recovery).

This general review is illustrated by examples in the fields of grinding and gravimetric concentration.