Track 2: Process Innovation, Circularity and Recovery

● Baseline Scenario: Assessment of the current plant configuration (2024) under the projected conditions of decreasing P2O5 head grade. ● Quick Wins (QW): Implementation of low-CAPEX operational improvements, primarily focusing on reducing Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and optimizing pump speeds. ● Alternative 4 (Alt 4): The selected strategic investment involving The selected strategic investment involving the targeted synchronization and debottlenecking of the feeding, pumping, and screening circuits. 4.2 Impact of Low-Grade Ore on Volumetric Capacity The transition toward a "Complex Orebody" implies a significant reduction in the head grade, requiring the plant to increase its volumetric throughput to maintain concentrate output levels. • Volumetric Sensitivity: The simulation demonstrates that for every 1% drop in head grade, the required volumetric flow through the scrubbing and classification circuits increases by approximately 4.5%. • Transient Choking: As the mass pull increases toward the 76% threshold, the secondary and tertiary stages experience "transient choking." This phenomenon occurs when internal buffers (B.01–B.09) reach maximum capacity, triggering upstream interlocks and reducing global plant availability. 4.3 Successive Constraints and Material Transport Limits The simulation reveals a critical migration of system constraints as the concentrator scales to handle significantly higher mass-pull volumes. Under the updated operating baseline, the stochastic model shows that the dominant bottlenecks shift toward the ore feeding conveyor systems (TR-1090), the primary cyclone feed pumping circuits (BP-2020), and the high-frequency screening stages (PN-2020). As throughput approaches the 4.96 Mtpa threshold, these assets reach their practical operating limits. The stochastic heatmap (Figure 4) confirms that the interaction between the projected 76% increase in mass pull and inherent operational variability triggers frequent transient choking events. Without structural synchronization of the feeding, pumping, and classification circuits, these areas become the controlling system constraints, effectively capping plant throughput regardless of downstream capacity. 4.4 Definition of the Progressive Roadmap Given the projected surge in mass handling, a phased evaluation methodology was designed to map the migration of constraints throughout the process chain. The initial 17 configurations were narrowed down to seven representative alternatives for final technicaleconomic analysis. This progression allowed the study to track how constraints migrate across the

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