Archive | Deep Sea Mining

https://www.scientificamerican.com/

As the industry inches closer to reality, scientists probe potential environmental harms

Slashing humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels will require billions of kilograms of metal: a single wind turbine can contain more than a metric ton of copper, and electric car batteries demand heaps of cobalt, nickel and manganese.

Most of these metals now come from terrestrial mines—often at the cost of deforestation, water pollution and human rights abuses. But a vast trove of metals on the deep-sea floor could soon provide an alternative source.

Though companies have been eyeing this possibility for decades, engineering challenges and unfavorable economics have kept work in the exploration phase. Continue Reading →

https://cleantechnica.com/

DeepGreen is a deep-sea mining company with a vision of a zero-carbon, circular economy. Its goal is to source metals with the least environmental and societal impact. I noticed the company when its social media marketer added me to a Twitter list.

DeepGreen Metals has an interesting name and it caught my attention more when I checked out its profile and was graciously offered the opportunity to interview the CEO, Gerard Barron.

I find the world of minerals, metals, and gemstones a fascinating one, and DeepGreen’s story using a technique with minerals to extract base metals for batteries really piqued my curiosity. Continue Reading →

https://www.cnbc.com/

Across the otherworldly plains of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, some 15,000 ft below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, are clustered manganese nodules the size of potatoes. The rare earth metal deposits have grown undisturbed at a rate of about a third of an inch every several million years. Now they are targets for the nascent seabed mining industry.

But plucking them off this dark desert is no easy task. First they need to be found. That’s where underwater drones come in. Hovering just feet above the seafloor, the machines can record unprecedented details of a surface less mapped than Mars.

“If you want high-resolution information, you have to put the sensor close to what you’re looking at. An AUV [automated underwater vehicle] is the best and most accurate way to do that,” said Richard Mills, vice president of marine robotics sales at Kongsberg Maritime. His company’s creations can relay images with a resolution of 2x2cm, much better than what’s possible with a surface-level ship’s sonar. Continue Reading →

https://www.theatlantic.com/

It’s underwater—and the consequences are unimaginable.

Unless you are given to chronic anxiety or suffer from nihilistic despair, you probably haven’t spent much time contemplating the bottom of the ocean. Many people imagine the seabed to be a vast expanse of sand, but it’s a jagged and dynamic landscape with as much variation as any place onshore. Mountains surge from underwater plains, canyons slice miles deep, hot springs billow through fissures in rock, and streams of heavy brine ooze down hillsides, pooling into undersea lakes.

These peaks and valleys are laced with most of the same minerals found on land. Scientists have documented their deposits since at least 1868, when a dredging ship pulled a chunk of iron ore from the seabed north of Russia. Five years later, another ship found similar nuggets at the bottom of the Atlantic, and two years after that, it discovered a field of the same objects in the Pacific.

For more than a century, oceanographers continued to identify new minerals on the seafloor—copper, nickel, silver, platinum, gold, and even gemstones—while mining companies searched for a practical way to dig them up. Continue Reading →