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Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

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To recapitulate the sizes and possible mining technologies for the three<br />

deposits, Mr. Lenoble said that the total tonnage of nodule ore required for a<br />

nodule mining operation would be in the range of 50 million tonnes, for<br />

cobalt-rich crusts 10 times less, and massive sulphides in the range of 8.5 to 10<br />

million tonnes. In relation to mining technologies, Mr. Lenoble said that in all<br />

cases a motorised dredge would be required, coupled with a hydraulic system<br />

to lift the material to the surface platform. For massive sulphides deposits, Mr.<br />

Lenoble said that while technology has been proposed to leach the deposit in<br />

situ, he is of the opinion that it would take some time for such technology to<br />

become operational. As a result, he said that at the commencement of<br />

massive sulphides mining, scrappers or some kind of dredging system with<br />

more power than for the two other kinds of deposits would be used.<br />

For processing the three types of minerals to recover the metals of<br />

interest, Mr. Lenoble noted that in the case of nodules, metal recovery would<br />

be from smelting or by leaching the ore on land. In the case of cobalt - rich<br />

crusts, Mr. Lenoble said that it would require separating the manganese and<br />

iron hydroxide contained in the ore before applying metallurgical processes.<br />

Finally, in the case of processing massive sulphides ore, Mr. Lenoble observed<br />

that although a problem has been identified with the ore’s very fine grain<br />

crystallization that may pose problems during processing, the ore was similar<br />

to land-based ores that are being processed hydrometallurgically as well as<br />

pyrometallurgically.<br />

For the purposes of comparing the possible economic returns from<br />

mining these three types of marine mineral resources, Mr. Lenoble said that<br />

normally the objective of a feasibility study is to estimate the profit that<br />

accrues from a given mining operation. He said that profit could be viewed as<br />

the revenues from the operation less the operation’s cost. For all of the marine<br />

minerals in this study, Mr. Lenoble pointed out that the costs to recover the<br />

metals of commercial interest are yet to be established. On the other hand,<br />

however, Mr. Lenoble said that the revenues from each of the operations can<br />

be determined since they consist of sales of the metals of commercial interest<br />

which, in turn is related to the sum of the grade of the tonnage produced<br />

multiplied by the price of each metal. He noted however, that at present there<br />

is no certainty about total production or production per unit of time from any<br />

INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 460

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