Technologies
Key technologies
and services
Key technologies and services for deep-sea mining
The maritime engineering industry focuses on solving the following key challenges:
- The development and use of innovative and responsible deep-sea mining technologies along the entire value chain.
- The planning and execution of component and system tests for ecologically justifiable deep-sea mining.
The industry is essentially dependent on economic, technological and ecological factors. A special challenge of deep-sea mining is that a multitude of specialized industries has to cooperate nationally and internationally in the following areas:
- seabed exploration
- environmental monitoring, reporting, documentation
- classification and certification
- a number of marine sciences and services such as geology, geophysics, oceanography, biology, geochemistry, ecology, etc.
- marine technology and shipbuilding
- insurance companies
- finance and banking
- Law firms (regulations, contracts, enforcement, disputes, intellectual properties, etc.)
The following technologies must be developed for use under extreme environmental conditions in the deep sea:
- Equipment and technologies for the mining of massive sulphides (milling)
- Equipment and technologies for mining manganese nodules (collectors)
- Underwater technologies (communication, energy supply, navigation and positioning, underwater robotics, including remote-controlled cabled and autonomous underwater vehicles)
- Vertical transport system (pumps, buffers and riser pipe)
- Mining ships (incl. energy supply and control room for the underwater mining system, drainage and interim storage of the extracted ores, conveyor technology for unloading the ore onto ore freighters for transport to the processing and refining plant)
New service, maintenance and logistics approaches must be developed and implemented. This includes:
- Ship equipment including maintenance and repair
- Handling at sea, transport on land
- "Zero Waste" claim for future processing and refining technologies!
- Raw materials trading with regard to the partly new types of raw materials