1. Barite: A strategic resource trapped by "impurities"

As the most common barium-containing mineral in nature, barite is like a low-key industrial all-rounder - it is not only the "well-killing guard" of oil and gas drilling, but also the "hidden champion" of high-end coatings, and the "steel barrier" of nuclear power plant radiation protection engineering. However, this strategic value has long been constrained by the bottleneck of sorting technology: its ore types are diverse, the paragenetic minerals are complex (such as quartz, fluorite, sulfide, etc.), and the color is significantly affected by impurities (white, gray, red, yellow, etc.)... Traditional hand-selection, magnetic separation, and gravity separation processes have always been difficult to balance between efficiency and precision, and a large number of medium and low-grade ores are forced to become "industrial scraps".

2. Bottlenecks of traditional mineral processing technology

At present, barite mineral processing mainly relies on traditional processes such as hand selection, gravity separation, magnetic separation and flotation:

Hand selection: relying on the human eye to identify color differences, low efficiency and serious waste of resources, only applicable to high-grade mines

Gravity separation: uses density difference to separate barite and gangue (such as quartz and calcite), but the recovery rate of fine-grained ores is insufficient and needs to be combined with other processes.

Magnetic separation: It is effective for iron-containing magnetic minerals, but it cannot handle non-magnetic impurities and its application range is limited.

Flotation: It is suitable for complex embedded ores through selective separation by reagents, but the process is lengthy, costly and easy to cause environmental pollution.

Traditional processes are particularly weak in the separation of paragenetic ores (such as barite-calcite). The separation efficiency is often low due to the similar physical and chemical properties of minerals. The purity of the concentrate is difficult to exceed 90%, and the energy consumption and environmental pressure are huge.

 MINGDER has been deeply involved in the field of mineral sorting for more than ten years. Aiming at the characteristics of barite, it has launched an AI+ intelligent sorting system with spectral imaging technology and artificial intelligence algorithms as the core to achieve efficient and accurate sorting, so that the value potential of each ton of ore can be released to the extreme.

3. Breaking the "inconsistency between appearance and reality": Technological evolution from apparent sorting to component identification

(1) Color sorter: an efficient capturer of apparent features

For high-quality barite with a whiteness of more than 90%, MINGDER adopts color sorting technology solutions. By configuring high-precision CCD sensors and intelligent light source systems, the equipment can accurately identify the 0.2mm² color difference area on the surface of the ore, and separate the brown iron inclusions, gray siliceous nodules and other impurities mixed in the white barite in real time at a jet removal frequency of 120 times per second.

Application scenario: Replace manual sorting, increase sorting efficiency by 5-10 times, and is suitable for high-grade mining areas .

(2) AI intelligent sorting machine: a component hunter that penetrates the "whiteness disguise"

For barite with low whiteness and fuzzy appearance characteristics (such as gray-black sulfur-containing ore and red iron-dyed ore), MINGDER has created a unique "spectral imaging + AI algorithm" sorting solution, which breaks through the limitation of traditional color sorting relying on apparent color difference, and can identify the subtle differences between waste rock, secondary ore and concentrate in barite in multiple dimensions and angles, so as to achieve accurate judgment and rapid identification.

Application scenario: suitable for barite with low whiteness and complex ore characteristics.

4. Value reconstruction from "industrial coarse grain" to "high-end food"

MINGDER AI sorting system promotes the upgrading of the barite industry chain through three-level value transition:

Primary purification: industrialization of impurity removal

The single-machine processing capacity ranges from 20-120 tons/hour, which is 20 times higher than the manual sorting efficiency. The BaSO₄ content of the concentrate is stable>92%, which can be directly used in bulk markets such as drilling mud weighting agents.

Fine classification: customized gravity sorting

The medium-gravity secondary ore and high-gravity concentrate are produced according to the density threshold, so that the ore resources are refined and differentiated, meeting the needs of different fields and maximizing the value of mineral resources.

Component purification: resource utilization of impurity elements

The quartz and calcite enriched in the sorting tailings can be used as other raw materials or environmentally friendly building materials to realize the value-added of "waste rock".

5. Future Outlook: Building a "smart new ecology" for mining sorting

MINGDER is extending AI sorting technology to the entire barite industry chain:

Mine end: On-site sorting in the mine to realize the on-site transformation of lean ores and tailings in the mine, improve resource utilization and reduce transportation costs.

Processing end: Cooperate with barium salt chemical companies to establish an integrated database of "sorting-purification-deep processing", and reversely optimize the raw ore procurement strategy through AI;

Through technology empowerment, barite, an "underestimated strategic resource", is breaking out of low-end homogeneous competition and accelerating towards the high-end market of hundreds of billions.