Extraction of rare earths from the seabed

Extraction of rare earths from the seabed

by Luigi Franco, LAMANNA (*) According to Japanese researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology there are between 80 and 100 billion tons of rare earths at a depth of between 3,500 and 6,000 meters below the botton of the Pacific Ocean in an area that lies beneath the jurisdiction of Hawaii, east of Tahiti in an area under the jurisdiction of French Polynesia and in the Japanese seabed.

At this depth, between 4 and 6 thousand meters, in addition to the presence of rare earths, there are expanses of polymetallic nodules [1], which are chemical sedimentary rocks, siliceous-metalliferous, spherical or lenticular, characterized from a dark crust of black, bluish or brown color, and from an average diameter of 5 cm and which may contain different percentages of minerals depending on the magma from which the degassing originates (they continuously form where clack-smokers are present) .

All photos illustred are copied from the WEB

I would like to point out that in the vicinity of these black-smokers, typical of the oceanic ridge areas, the temperature goes from 400° C up to 1,000° C and the acidity of the sea water is so low that it touches a pH of 2, 8.

Photo 01 - Mechanized cutter for seabed. The weight is estimated at around 300 tons.

Source: Nautilus Minerals Inc.

Therefore, an urgent study is needed by expert technologists of the sector, with the collaboration of geologists in the sector, to create a feasible innovative technology, very advanced, different from the procedure currently in progress, made of scraping and suction of the seabed (see photo 01 the type of cutter that is used today).

This type of uncontrolled excavation made of "scraping" of the seabed and subsequent "aspiration" of the same towards the surface of the sea, where there are support ships with "surface platforms" for collecting the desired material, returning the materials to the sea sterile. This excavation system is already in use and will be the architect of one of the major disasters known to date. A few years ago they started to destroy, at a speed of operations that were nothing short of insane, irreparably damaging all the marine fauna, and therefore an entire ecosystem.

Allow me to briefly replace the voice of the scientists, in my limited knowledge about it, pointing out that the extraction of "polymetallic nodules", in particular, "manganese nodules" create truly harmful effects: in fact, during the scraping of the seabed, the mechanized rollers used to collect the nodules lift the sediments and when these, the sediments, fall back into the sea and are deposited again on the seabed, it happens that the sensitive organisms present in these sediments die.

Furthermore, always during the scraping process and going to dig in depth, during this phase all the organisms present are killed and cannot escape this mechanical action.

Even if they are not damaged, these are sucked up together with nodules and die on the surface during the cleaning process of the material on the support vessel.

Finally, the sedimentary water used for cleaning the "manganese nodules", when this is released back into the sea, by the support vessels, particularly near the surface, this process will disturb the growth of algae over time and other planktonic organisms. I do not dwell on this topic because I do not have the requisites to illustrate more concretely.

So, digging so wildly, without any control, I realize that a vital evolution that lasted about 4 billion years is being destroyed (it was not enough for us to face the pollution of the seas due to plastic). Unfortunately, there seem to be no decisive signs in this regard.

Therefore, in my opinion, decarbonization is not the real common problem of humanity, which has been talked about lately, a lot and for several weeks at Cop26 (Climate Conference in Glasgow, UK) because, to decarbonization we already have alternative solutions [2], based on clean (ie renewable) energy, while I ask myself, after this wild "scraping", which is evolving on several fronts, what will be the solution, if any, to the autochthonous repopulation of the seabed once it has been destroyed ?

What are the prospects of the States concerned and participating today in the "Deep Sea Mining" and moreover I have wondered these days, if we had to intervene immediately, how many years it will take, after this great havoc, for the seabed to return to repopulate with a new marine habitat ?

Type of mineral deposit

Average depth

Resources found

Polymetallic nodules

4.000 - 6.000 m

Nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese

Manganese crusts

800 - 2.400 m

Cobalt, vanadium, molybdenum and platinum

Sulphide deposits

1.400 - 3.700 m

Copper, lead and zinc, gold and silver

Tab. 01 - Illustration of the minerals present in the ocean floor and relative depths

Friends and colleagues, I am not against "Deep Sea Mining" or the companies "Nautilus Minerals" and "Neptune Minerals", because these respond to market logic, unfortunately I do not have a precise answer to answer the above posed as a question, and therefore I address the rulers and the political world, even if, in the draft of the final Conference of the President in office at Cop26, the latter emphasized that what follows in his final document must be guaranteed: << ... guarantee the 'integrity of all ecosystems, including the ocean and cryosphere, and the protection of biodiversity,…. >>.

It is not we who must give << guarantee >>, it must be them, the participants of governments in Cop26, who must have the courage to propose guidelines to follow, including funding to be guaranteed, given that, as already written in my previous article, the president on duty of the "G20 of ROME", Dr. Mario DRAGHI in his participation on the sidelines of the United Nations "COP26 of GLASGOW" conference on climate change had said: <<…. We will certainly have news on the contribution that the private sector can make to climate finance.

They are numbers, from what we understand today, truly stratospheric: 100 and pass, 120, 130, 140 trillion dollars. This requires a response from governments on how to help the transition knowing that funding is not an issue. There is unprecedented public funding "… .. >>.

All photos illustred are copied from the WEB

Photo 02 - Taken from the web: The Pew Charitable Trusts

But, in my opinion, the interests are too big, and the protection of the environment by the rulers and politicians would have already taken a back seat.

The possibility of making the exploitation of rare earths in the marine subsoil commercially possible is a great international challenge, with significant effects, not only economic but also geopolitical given the strategic nature of these resources.

Therefore, if for a moment we become indifferent to the ideals, to the conventions of the society in which we live, to morals, and to face reality in a different way, we see that, under most of the seabed, there are millions of tons of metals useful and necessary to us, including nickel, copper and of which the latter, copper, according to recent studies will disappear in the next 40 years, as well as cobalt, manganese, and gallium, which are all fundamental elements in countless sectors of our world economy. Such as dysprosium and yttrium, rare earths, respectively used in the magnets of hybrid technologies and lasers.

So I realize that this last productive activity of mining, that of the ocean floor, is a fundamental resource for the current world economy because it guarantees us the minimum conditions of survival for the near future, remembering that today, great part of the world population lives in great poverty and it is difficult to enter the future world of work.

So, in my humble opinion, I speak as a technician, the extraction of raw materials from the seabed is an economic activity of fundamental importance for us, although today, particular mineral deposits of raw materials present on the earth's crust, constitute an opportunity to cope with traditional poverty, but many countries fail to make the right profit for the immense investments needed.

Let me remind you that, a report published in 2016 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in 2015 there were 91 developing countries highly dependent on raw materials (over 70% of exports). While the World Bank estimated that the African continent alone held about 40-50% of the mineral deposits alone.

I would like to point out that some of these minerals, such as tantalum and also cobalt, are essential for the production of some electronic devices, particular heat-resistant glasses as well as vehicle catalytic converters, etc., but they come in most cases from Countries with very fragile governments, both politically and economically.

In fact, today tantalum, in the face of the weakening of world demand and prices, is leading to the total closure of some mines or to a temporary suspension of mining operations, due to lost profits due to too low market prices. Without wanting to forget that this, once again, will create a lot of unemployment, in addition to extractive practices harmful to health and the environment, we must also add the armed conflicts that there are in particular areas of the planet, especially in the African continent, conflicts made to guarantee access to and control of raw materials.

MINERAL

Fig. 01 - Example of an open pit mine

Therefore, as I have already written in my previous article, always concerning the "rare earths", it is necessary to begin to clarify the facts, and not with beautiful speeches or reports of convenience. We need to put some order, we need to reconsider the problem of extraction from the seabed, through an immediate involvement, with the involvement of the UN, of the International Seabed Authority (ISA International Seabed Authority) on the law of the sea for the organization , the regulation and control of all extractive activities relating to minerals present in the seabed, especially those present in international waters, which must be for the exclusive benefit of humanity, as a whole and independent of the territoriality to which the same waters belong.

I remind the reader friends of my Post that, if we want to address the issue on this last point, there is already a regulatory political framework that should be respected by the governments concerned, in particular, among the regulations we find that there is the International Convention for prevention pollution from ships (Convention for the Prevention of Pollution From Ships, MARPOL) and the (Convention on Biological Diversity, CBD).

The United Nations itself has already drawn up Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 17 ambitious goals valid until 2030 and designed for the future of international development. Among them we find the objective of "sustainable use of the sea: to conserve and use the oceans, seas and marine resources in a sustainable way for sustainable development", which includes, among other things, the objective of significantly reducing marine pollution by 2025 (UNDP 2015).

All photos illustred are copied from the WEB

Photo 03 - Open pit mine

Therefore, in the face of the considerable investments necessary and which will have to be sustained, today it is essential to organize the extraction of these new minerals in the best way, for the world economy, but without destroying the marine ecosystem but, organizing itself with modern technologies through subsequent massive investments, the way to make the seabed recoverable, now partly already destroyed. Therefore, it is necessary to redesign new machines and / or new extractive technologies capable of not totally destroying the seabed with long-term effects unknown to us.

Given the depth and the means employed so far, unfortunately a race has already begun for the indiscriminate exploitation of marine ecosystems, which are compromising a large part of the ocean floor, as some Australian and Canadian private individuals and Japanese companies are doing (Norway will authorize the extraction of metals from the seabed in national deep waters from 2024).

There is already talk of more than 1,000,000 square kilometers of exploratory mining projects on the seabed of the Pacific Ocean by the Canadian mining company Nautilus Minerals, which already in 2014 signed an agreement with the Papua New Guinea government to develop its own project extraction from its seabed. In the same year, the Rare-Earth Rich Mud Development Promoting Consortium was founded with the participation of numerous public and private companies, with the aim of developing advanced technologies that allow the access and extraction of these resources.

MINERAL

Fig. 02 - Example of an underground mine

Today we have to change this excavation methodology, for the sole reason that we have not yet developed the right technology, pointing out, to those who are not in the sector, that many minerals, with the unruly use of today's seabed exploitation techniques, these minerals they will run out very soon, compared to the next 20 - 60 years predicted by recent studies, and with consequent crises in fundamental sectors of the world economy.

While waiting to rethink to make new innovative and more in-depth projects, always using the mechanized

All photos illustred are copied from the WEB

excavation method in the seabed, we must strive, in my opinion, at an international level, to improve the standards relating to the exploitation of the mines that are already being exploited on the earth's crust (in addition to bringing order to the trade of raw materials).

Photo 04 - At a depth of 2669 m, black coral, primnoid coral and feather stars cover part of the Davidson Seamount off the coast of California. Photo-editing: Simone Hoschack, Jan Lehmköster – Project manager: Jan Lehmköster - Editing and text: Tim Schröder It is necessary to undertake to favor its effective implementation, by all the States concerned, and by the related companies in the sector present, for a greater controlled exploitation of the earth's subsoil, digging at great depths, strengthening the current "open pit mine" (Open Pit Mine) or "underground" (Underground Mining), when the deposit is too deep to be extracted profitably in the open, with new methodologies and technologies, with the support of new formulas of innovative materials [3] using particular resins and of which the undersigned is developing, with the collaboration and financial support of the Italian NGO, FONDAZIONE INTERNAZIONALE DI CENTRO STUDI E RICERCHE, to allow the identification and extraction of the "rare earths" present in current mines, "rare earths" not always easy to find, however, in a safe, economic way and with the least possible waste, in a sustainable way, to exploit its great potential.

(*) Luigi Franco, LAMANNA Independent Technical Consultant in the sector of Tunnelling, Mining and Underground Technology President of the Fondazione Internazionale di Centro Studi e Ricerche, ONG 132, via dei Serpenti, 00184 ROMA, Italy, U.E. Email: lamannaluigifranco1@gmail.com

LinkedIn: Lamanna Luigi Franco

NOTE: [1] - the polymetallic nodules present in the Pacific Ocean bottoms contain, on average%, 30% manganese, 6% iron, 2% nickel, 1.50% copper, 0, 30% cobalt, 0.60% titanium, 3% aluminum and about 33% other precious metals in high quantity as well as quality.

[2] - photovoltaic, solar thermal, solar thermodynamic, wind (energy), hydroelectric (energy), geothermal (energy), marine or oceanic (energy).

[3] - the technical team of the FOUNDATION made itself available to the mining sector by offering a wide range of products fully integrated in the sector. For several decades our technicians have been involved in mining projects in different parts of the world. Our constant research study, in collaboration with chemical industries in the sector, has allowed us to study particular products that solve almost all the challenges of the moment and to find innovative solutions, not only in the Mining sector, but also in Tunneling.

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