The phosphate industry faces the dilemma of "many poor ores and few rich ores". Low-grade phosphate ore faces technical bottlenecks that are difficult to purify and veins that are forced to be sealed due to insufficient economic efficiency. Today, with the breakthrough of artificial intelligence sorting technology in mineral processing, the technical bottleneck of low-grade phosphate ore sorting has been broken, allowing the veins that were originally insufficient in economic efficiency to be mined.

Difficulties in sorting and purifying low-grade phosphate ore

Low average grade and low resource utilization rate. When the P2O5 content of many ores is less than 20%, high-siliceous phosphate ore and gangue are closely interwoven, making the cost of traditional flotation technology of US$11-16.5 per ton seem unbearable; colloidal phosphate is difficult to separate impurities, which has long restricted the economic efficiency of wet phosphoric acid process.

In 2025, the demand for phosphate ore for lithium iron phosphate batteries is expected to grow by 18%, while the demand for traditional phosphate fertilizers will still account for 60%. When the price of 28% grade phosphate rock exceeded US$165.5 or more, a large amount of low-grade ore with a P2O5 content of 15%-18% became a "silent resource" on the edge of the mine due to high development costs.

AI sorting: turning waste into treasure.

Low-grade phosphate ore introduced MINGDER Optoelectronics AI sorting technology: the 17% grade ore, which was originally judged as a "marginal economic mine", was accurately sorted by MINGDER Optoelectronics AI sorting machine. The concentrate grade jumped to 25%, and the waste rock rate dropped sharply from 40% to 15%. This equipment, which combines hyperspectral imaging and AI artificial intelligence sorting technology, is like installing a "perspective eye" on the ore. A single unit can identify phosphate concentrate and tailings with an error rate of 2% at a processing speed of 20-30 tons/hour. The deep learning algorithm behind it has been trained with tens of thousands of ore images and can accurately distinguish low-grade phosphate ore in some areas.

Compared with traditional mineral processing technology, AI sorting reduces the cost of sorting per ton of ore and shortens the investment return cycle. The more far-reaching impact is that low-grade phosphate ore is repriced. Pre-treated low-grade ore can be directly used for phosphate fertilizer or prepared into phosphoric acid, increasing the profit per ton; ore bodies that were abandoned in the past due to insufficient grade have now become valuable and mineable ore bodies. The reduction in tailings (30%-50%) and energy consumption (40%) brought about by AI sorting have significantly reduced the carbon footprint of mines, winning development space for the industry to reduce the "dual carbon" target.

Technological changes are giving birth to a larger industrial ecological chain - the integration of intelligent sorting systems and 5G mines, realizing full digitalization from mining, sorting to processing; Breakthroughs in associated element extraction technology have transformed each mine into a "multi-metal bank"; and the practice of the "zero tailings" concept redefines the environmental ethics of mining development.