1640 selective upgrading of suitable material before surface processing, while IMR created an additional recovery pathway for lower-grade, residual or fragmented material. Together, these technologies increased the number of economically extractable stopes, diversified copper production sources and improved resource utilisation over the life of mine. A key conclusion was that the greatest value of IPM was achieved when mining, processing, recovery and backfill systems were designed as an integrated whole. The results indicated that project value was not driven only by individual technology performance, but by the ability to reconfigure material flows, manage processing constraints and align recovery pathways with the characteristics of the orebody. In this sense, ILR and IMR can provide practical transition pathways for conventional underground mining operations, capturing part of the IPM value proposition without requiring the full geological and hydrogeological conditions needed for ISR. 4.1 Further work The results should be interpreted as indicative of potential value and key sensitivities rather than feasibility-level forecasts. Further validation is required to confirm technology performance, refine cost assumptions, quantify environmental impacts and assess operational readiness. Recommended further work to de-risk IPM implementation includes: • Validating the methodology on an alternative block model with different geometry and grade profile; • Conducting discrete event simulation of mine operation to highlight potential bottlenecks in material or fleet movement; • Including penalties for surface infrastructure or tailings storage to focus on low-footprint flowsheets; • Refining the simulation framework to allow the backfill content in discrete stopes to be tracked such that a more accurate estimation of the rate of copper extraction through IMR can be obtained; • Incorporating sustainability-based indicators, such as energy intensity, water use, emissions, tailings generation and surface infrastructure footprint, alongside NPV; • Expanding the granularity of extraction and processing assumptions, including the effects of particle size distribution, temperature, permeability and lixiviant concentration on recovery performance. In conclusion, the findings support the use of integrated techno-economic modelling as a practical basis for assessing IPM opportunities. By quantifying how In-Line Recovery and In-Mine Recovery affect material movement, recovery pathways and project value, the framework provides an evidence-based approach to guide future technology development, project screening and lower-footprint mine design. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors thank previous Mining3 researchers, in particular Amin Mousavi for early development of the simulation framework REFERENCES Batterham, R.J. and Robinson, D.J., (2019). Will in-place recovery ever replace the need for flotation? Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration, 36(1), 189–197 Seredkin, M., Zabolotsky, A. and Jeffress, G., (2016). In situ recovery, an alternative to conventional methods of mining: Exploration, resource estimation, environmental issues, project evaluation and economics. Ore Geology Reviews, 79, 500–514
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