Chapter 297 - 153: Reconnaissance

Chapter 297: Chapter 153: Reconnaissance

But halting production wasn’t an option.

Beyond that, there were copper, manganese, cobalt, chromium, and platinum-group metals—all mineral resources that were extremely scarce domestically.

Among these, the most perilous situation involved phosphate ore.

The main issue is that once phosphate ore is processed into fertilizer, it dissolves easily in water. It is then carried into rivers and lakes, eventually flowing into the ocean in a process that is nearly irreversible.

Of course, if cost were no object, it would be possible to collect all the agricultural runoff and domestic sewage and re-extract the phosphorus within.

The problem was that this method would cost a hundred times more than producing phosphorus from ore. In turn, this would cause the price of phosphate fertilizer to skyrocket a hundredfold as well.

If the price of phosphate fertilizer increased a hundredfold, the consequences would be unthinkable.

Take wheat, for example. One mu requires about 4 kg of phosphate fertilizer. At roughly 0.9 yuan per kg, the cost comes to 3.6 yuan per mu. If the price of phosphate fertilizer increased a hundredfold, that cost would leap to 360 yuan per mu.

Considering the average domestic wheat yield is only about 450 kg per mu, this would increase the cost per kilogram of wheat by 0.8 yuan.

The state’s procurement price for wheat had only risen by 0.02 yuan per year, from 2.34 yuan/kg in ’23, to 2.36 yuan/kg in ’24, and finally to 2.38 yuan/kg last year.

A sudden 0.8-yuan increase in the procurement price for wheat would cause the prices of other daily necessities to soar in tandem.

Moreover, the three primary fertilizers are essential supplements for plant growth. Without phosphate fertilizer, the phosphorus naturally present in the soil is wholly insufficient. This would lead to decreased yields for grains, vegetables, and fruits, along with reduced resistance to cold and disease.

Some might think Jiang Miao was being an alarmist.

The country’s phosphate reserves could last at least another thirty years. By then, perhaps a technology for cheaply extracting phosphorus from natural bodies of water would be available.

However, a realistic analysis showed that the cost of extracting phosphorus from seawater could never be lower than from phosphate ore. The answer lay in the concentration levels.

The high-grade phosphate ore in Morocco has an average phosphorus content (measured as diphosphorus pentoxide) of 33–34%, whereas the domestic average is around 16%.

Seawater, on the other hand, has a phosphorus content of 0.07 milligrams per liter.

The disparity in concentration was astronomical. Unless controlled nuclear fusion could drive electricity prices down to 0.01 yuan per kWh, you could forget about extracting phosphorus from seawater.

Even with the Snowfield Plateau as the nation’s final mineral reserve, the cost of mining and refining its three-billion-plus tons of phosphate ore would only continue to rise.

Once America realized its food-based economic warfare was ineffective, you could bet they would move to sabotage the country’s mining operations in other regions.

Furthermore, if the country were to achieve complete self-sufficiency in grains, oils, animal feed, and sugar, fertilizer production could not be allowed to decline.

Therefore, it was imperative to either find high-grade phosphate deposits within the country or develop a more efficient phosphorus extraction technology.

Jiang Miao was capable of achieving both.

He didn’t hold out much hope for finding high-grade, easily accessible deposits. After all, subterranean exploration in many parts of the country already reached depths of four to five hundred meters. Finding any deposit that had been overlooked would be a matter of pure luck.

He shifted his focus to the ultra-low-grade, so-called "trash" deposits.

In fact, Jiang Miao had already investigated the phosphate situation in Zhelimu City. The deposits here were primarily magmatic apatite. This type of ore, mostly found in the North, accounted for 7% of the nation’s total reserves.

Typically, these deposits were low-grade, with a concentration usually under 10% and sometimes as low as 2–3%, making them commercially unviable to mine.

Phosphorus was also present as a byproduct in other minerals, but usually in very low concentrations.

For instance, the magnetite deposit before him, located 50 to 80 meters beneath the desert, had an average phosphorus content of about 0.63%. The entire deposit contained only about 110,000 tons of magnetite ore. Even if it were all extracted, it would yield a mere 693 tons of diphosphorus pentoxide.

A small iron deposit like this had no commercial mining value whatsoever.

「That night」

Jiang Miao and his party rested in Zhelimu City.

「The next day」

As dawn broke, the convoy headed north along Highway 304 toward Servant County.

While passing near Hai Rihan Forest Farm, Jiang Miao came to a stop. In the adjacent hills, he had discovered a vast, shallow deposit of magmatic apatite with an average diphosphorus pentoxide content of 2.3–3.1%.

"We’ll survey the area around here," Jiang Miao said.

Ke Yong and the others naturally had no objections to his command.

After more than three hours of driving slowly along various township and dirt roads, Jiang Miao had mapped out the general contours of the magmatic apatite deposit.

The magmatic apatite in this region was distributed in sheets—a characteristic feature of mineralization in igneous rock. The deposit measured 7.9 to 11.6 km in width and 47 to 49 km in length, with a thickness of 12 to 15 meters. It was buried at a depth of 5 to 20 meters, with some sections shallow enough for open-pit mining.

The average diphosphorus pentoxide content of the magmatic apatite here was 2.3–3.1%. A small fraction of it reached as high as 7.2%, but this portion was minuscule.

The mining costs for such a deposit were far too high. The local mineral exploration department had likely already surveyed it and deemed it commercially unviable.

However, the total volume of the magmatic apatite deposit was immense: a full 5 billion cubic meters, equivalent to roughly 15 billion tons of ore.

Based on an average diphosphorus pentoxide content of 2.7%, this meant it held approximately 405 million tons of diphosphorus pentoxide.