9.67M tons! Our country discovers the world's second-largest light rare earth mineral deposit

Ask AI · How can artificial intelligence find-mining technology break through the bottleneck in identifying concealed rare-earth deposits?

Original headline: China has discovered the world’s second-largest light rare-earth deposit

Newly added rare-earth resources: 9.666 million tons

On the 24th, the Ministry of Natural Resources reported that our country’s new round of strategic actions to break through mineral exploration has achieved new results. In the Niuping mining area of Mianing County, Sichuan Province, our country has discovered the world’s second-largest light rare-earth deposit.

Rare earths are known as “industrial vitamins,” and are key raw materials for high-tech industries and defense technology industries. Recently, the Ministry of Natural Resources released the results of the resource-reserve verification and prospecting survey project for the rare-earth deposit in the Niuping mining area. As a result, the Niuping mining area added 9.666 million tons of rare-earth resources (REO). By this point, the Niuping mining area has a cumulative identified rare-earth resource of 11.46 million tons, an increase of over 500%. It ranks second in the world in terms of resource reserves among rare-earth mines in production. The project achieved a major breakthrough in prospecting for concealed carbonate-hosted rare-earth deposits in the Panxi region. It not only strengthens the country’s strategic stockpiling of rare-earth resources, but also provides an innovative example for finding ores in the deep and surrounding areas under complex geological structures in the Panxi region.

Targeting major exploration challenges in the Panxi region—such as high elevation, deeply incised terrain, thick overburden, and difficulty in locating concealed ore bodies—the project innovatively integrates artificial-intelligence-based exploration algorithms to build a “three-in-one” exploration system: “drone hyperspectral—geology—structural mapping, high-precision time-frequency electromagnetic measurements, and three-dimensional detection of micro- and nano-particle matter.” It performs intelligent analysis, modeling, and target-zone prediction of multi-source exploration data, greatly improving the accuracy of concealed-ore identification and exploration efficiency, and successfully breaking through the technical bottleneck in identifying concealed ore bodies, significantly boosting exploration efficiency.

In addition, the Niuping mining area has also added 27.135 million tons of associated fluorite resources and 37.228 million tons of associated barite resources; both reach super-large scales and are also of major strategic significance. Both fluorite and barite in the Niuping mining area are associated mineral commodities with rare-earth deposits. Fluorite is also known as fluorspar; it is the source of industrial fluorine elements and is crucial for emerging industries and future industries. Barite’s main component is barium sulfate, and in the field of oil and natural gas exploration and production it serves as an indispensable drilling-mud weighting agent.

(Source: People’s Daily)