Abstract
Ferromanganese nodules have been recognized as a potential future metal source for over 50 years. Many research and development efforts have been conducted by many organizations. Most of the efforts have been concentrated into the mining technologies especially for hydraulic lifting through riser pipes with bulk-scale nodule collector. However, no commercial mining venture exists. Uncertainty in the economy of nodule mining is considered to be the reason for this. In order to improve the economy, a mining subsystem based on mechanical lifting and small-scale collectors is proposed and the preliminary economic feasibility is examined in this study. The benefit was at a favorable level compared with that using hydraulic lifting with bulk-scale collector. From the viewpoint of environmental impact assessment, environmental considerations of deep-sea sediment plume are explained.
Highlights
On the basis of this information, the first mining target areas were in the Clarion–Clipperton fracture zone (CCZ) in the Northeast Pacific
Setting net present value (NPV) = 0, internal rate of return (IRR) is calculated by the following equation
A new mining subsystem based on mechanical lifting and small-scale collectors was proposed, and its economic feasibility was examined and compared with hydraulic lifting and bulk-scale collector in this study
Summary
Technical, and economic publications are available on ferromanganese nodules (FNs) because FNs have been considered to be the primary commercial mining target in deep-sea mineral resources for the past more than 50 years [1,2]. The pipe bucket elevator studied by India was a lifting method [24], but the mining subsystem was changed to small-scale collectors with flexible risers [29,39]. Both shuttle miner and bucket elevator were considered inappropriate for bulk-scale FN production. One disadvantage of the economic evaluation results in the report [42] is that only hydrometallurgy was selected as the processing subsystem
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