Deepsea Mining In China

Abstract

ABSTRACT At present, the ore reserves per man in China is 1.5t, much less than 3.5t which is the average ore reserves per man in the world. With the development of China national economic construction, the requirement for copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese to China's industries is being increased gradually, Currently, the supply of these metals is short of demand in China, and this shortage is filled up through the import of mineral products from other countries, Thus the polymetallic nodule mining in deep sea is of great importance to China national economic construction, This paper describes the situation of China's metals market, the early study on deep sea mining, the existing conditions of the exploitation of deep sea polymetallic nodules in China up to date, and the general situation of China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association (COMRA). From the point of the author's view, the deep sea mining plan and the technical strategy to achieve the aim of industrial mining in the registered international seabed nodule area early in the next century taken by a China ocean mining entity are described in the last section of this paper. INTRODUCTION The increasing development of today's Industry leads the demand for metals to great increase inevitably. With the ever decreasing of the land mineral resources, the wish for obtaining the ore from oceans becomes more eager. Therefore, the seafloor in the future will be a base of raw metal supply to the world industries. Early in 1960s'the assessment of nodule mineral resources in the seafloor was made by J. L. Mere, Professor in a university in U.S.A. Since then, it is increasingly acknowledged that the manganese nodules in the seafloor are said to be a new mineral resources Meanwhile, the surveying of seabed manganese nodules was started in many countries. Up to now, a great progress in the research and development of seabed manganese nodules has been extended, especially in U.S.A., Germany, France, Japan and former USSR etc. Without any exception, a great achievement in the surveying of seabed manganese nodules had been made by China(the 5th pioneer investor of deep sea mining fol. lowing on India, former USSR, France and Japan, which was approved by the Preparatory. Commission for the International Seabed Authority officially in March 1991), According to the surveying, the manganese nodules distribute over the deep seabed, especially concentrating in the Pacific ocean, Of course, it is very difficult to collect the manganese nodules in such a deep sea. this is a systematic engineering involved in many disciplines such as geology, oceanography, metallurgy, electronics, shipbuilding, mechanics, computer supervisor y control, underwater TV, remote control, new materials,. and new technology etc. In order to make the exploitation and utilization of ocean mineral resources possessed of human race be true as soon as possible, the deep sea mining sector of China is willing to cooperate with he international entities to research in the mining, processing and metallurgy technology. for manganese nodules.