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Future mineral demand
Published in Natalia Yakovleva, Edmund Nickless, Routledge Handbook of the Extractive Industries and Sustainable Development, 2022
Patrice Christmann, Elias T. Ayuk, Antonio M. A. Pedro, S. Vijay Kumar
None of the above figures account for marine resources. Oceans cover about two-thirds of the Earth’s surface and contain a diversity of economically important minerals and metal ores. However, these resources are only very locally documented by detailed investigations. They could significantly expand the stock of the above-mentioned resources. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to report in detail on the current state of knowledge, some figures from the scientific literature hint at a very large potential. Manganese nodules. These are potato-shaped chemical accretions deposited on the abyssal plains. Morgan (2012) estimates that 4.85 M km² of the well-investigated Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a seabed area located in the central Pacific and the world largest known nodules occurrence area, contains an inferred resource of 7,300 Mt Mn, 58 Mt Co, 340 Mt Ni and 290 Mt Cu, plus a range of other elements. The total CCZ area is 12.1 M km², its potential being undocumented. There are several other marine areas in the world known for their manganese nodule potential. As these nodules take millions of years to grow, once harvested, they would not be a renewable resource.Cobalt crusts: these are chemical precipitates that very slowly form crusts over the top and part of the slopes of seamounts, at depths ranging between 400 and 4,000 metres. Locally, these crusts can be over 20 cm thick and have Co contents of about 1%, more than in most land-based currently mined deposits. Bücker et al. (2014) estimate the inferred resource of the Prime Crust Zone, an area larger than the CCZ, located 3,000 km southwest of Japan, to include 1,714 Mt of Mn, 50 Mt Co and 32 Mt Ni, plus a wide range of other metals. Cobalt crust-rich areas are known elsewhere, for instance in the Exclusive Economic Zones of the Marshall Islands or of French Polynesia.Seafloor Massive Sulphide deposits (SMS): these sulphide-rich deposits form around submarine hydrothermal vents known as black smokers or in deep-sea tectonically active troughs such as the Atlantis-II Deep deposit in the Red Sea. Bücker et al. (2014) underline the still very sketchy knowledge available on these deposits, but they could add significantly to the onshore copper potential.
The economics of mining seabed manganese nodules: A case study of the Indian Ocean nodule field
Published in Marine Georesources & Geotechnology, 2019
Ranadhir Mukhopadhyay, Sankalp Naik, Shawn De Souza, Ozinta Dias, Sridhar D Iyer, Anil K Ghosh
Manganese nodule mine sites are characterized by nodules that have a rich grade (Ni + Cu + Co ≥2%), high abundance (≥5 kg/m2) and nearly even topography (seafloor slope ≤3°, ISA 2010; SPC 2016). Among the oceanic areas where nodules are present on the seafloor, there are only four basins in the world that show promising commercial prospect. These four areas are: Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ in the Equatorial North Pacific Ocean), Peru Basin (in the Southeast Pacific Ocean), the Indian Ocean nodule field (IONF, in the Central Indian Ocean Basin) and Cook Island (east of Australia in the central South Pacific Ocean, also known as Penrhyn Basin; Figure 2, ISA 2010). There has always been a worldwide scepticism on the issue of whether mining the manganese nodules would be technologically feasible, commercially viable, and economically sustainable (Glasby 2000; Qasim and Nair 1988). In this background, we present a scenario of a financial feasibility study to mine the nodules in the IONF (areal extent 9° S–16.5°S, 72° E–80° E).