Abstract: The typical characteristics of mineral resources in China are low grade, fine size and complicated. Fine minerals have become an important part of the mineral resources, which may become the main body of resource extraction in the near future. The efficient exploitation and utilization of ultrafine minerals are of great significance to the mineral resources guarantee of China. In this paper the development of ultrafine minerals separation technology in recent years is summarized. The bottleneck problems of efficient utilization of ultrafine minerals are analyzed. Increasing the "apparent particle size", development of new flotation agents, and decreasing bubble size are still important directions for the flotation separation of ultrafine minerals. The selective magnetic flocculation separation technology can overcome the shortcomings of traditional fine particle flotation, such as low bubble particle collision efficiency, pulp rheology, solution chemical environment adaptability and so on. However, there is no systematic theory about the process and mechanism of particle collision, adsorption, agglomeration, and desorption yet. The industrial application is still a long way off. In a word, the traditional single separation technology is difficult to break through the bottleneck of the existing technology. The solution to the problem of efficient separation of ultrafine minerals depends on the innovation in the cross field.