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South African Engineers Lead Deep Sea Mining Effort

09/17/2007

Cape Town based engineering company, Marine and Mineral Projects, has taken another step in pioneering the global future of deep sea mining, with the installation and launch of its advanced remote crawler technology on the first deep sea mining vessel, The Peace in Africa, to operate off the South Africa coast in May 2007.
The Peace in Africa, is a De Beers Consolidated Mines owned ship that was converted into a floating diamond mine in a mammoth two year project. The conversion project saw Marine and Mineral Projects contracted to fit the ship with deep sea mining crawler technology, which included the remotely controlled crawler, launch and recovery system and vessel mooring system.
With some land-based mineral deposits being fully exploited across the world, deep sea mining is set to revolutionize global approaches to the search for precious metals, diamonds, oil and other sought after minerals.
The conversion of the Peace in Africa required – amongst other things – 1,950 tons of steel, 48 km’s of cable, 12 tons of paint and over 600,000 man hours.
According to Rodney Norman, the managing director of Marine and Mineral Projects, the 240-ton remotely controlled seabed crawler unit on the Peace in Africa, which undertakes the mining, is connected to the ship by a 650 mm internal diameter rubber hose through which the seabed material is pumped to the plant, using a 2.4MW pumping system. A 500KW hydraulic power pack powers the systems on the crawler, “The ship and crawler will work up to 35 km offshore and at depths of up to 150 metres where mining activities will be undertaken in 100m x 100m blocks.”
“Worldwide there are only a handful of diamond mining vessels in operation and it’s a very specialized and new area of exploration; we are proud to say that Marine and Mineral Projects is pioneering the essential technology and has developed the best equipment to retrieve these mineral rich deposits,” says Norman.
“The concept of deep sea marine mining arose in response to the rich diamond deposits that were identified off the coast of Namibia. More recently, other mineral deposits have been identified in various locations around the world, including in the Manus Basin, off the coast of Papua New Guinea, within the Kermadec Ridge in New Zealand waters and along several other fissures within the Pacific Rim of Fire, to name a few – globally mining investors are calling this the ‘new gold rush’.”
“Deep sea mining is predicted to yield an enormous quantity of minerals. De Beers realized some time ago that marine production had excellent potential and the Peace in Africa is expected to produce approximately 240,000 carats a year.”
“Marine and Mineral Projects have developed efficient remote controlled deep sea mining technology that allows for low-cost marine based mining,” says Norman.
Deep sea mining is less invasive than land based mining and produces far less waste material, which all has less of an impact on the environment. Land based mining operations often disturb large areas to get to the minerals, whereas, in the ocean the deposits are literally sitting on the seafloor and in the mining process there is less of an impact and quicker rehabilitation takes place.
Two of the largest venture mining companies to invest in deep sea mining, Nautilus and Neptune, are backed by the world’s largest mining houses including Anglo American, Barrick Gold and Teck Cominico.
Nautilus and Neptune are actively involved in deep-sea exploration and are positioned to become leaders in deep sea mining. Without the technology developed by Marine and Mineral Projects, the deep-sea world of mineral wealth would only available at extraction costs that would make mining impossible to sustain.
“We are extremely proud to be able to offer this unique technology, developed locally,” said Norman. “The future prospects are extremely exciting as MMP is imminently set to become involved in several global projects in conjunction with some of the largest mining organisations in the world.”