2/21/2024 0 Comments Dredging miningThere is increasing global concern over the long-term availability of secure and adequate supplies of critical raw materials, known as E-tech elements, which have an essential contribution to emerging ‘green’ technologies 1. These considerations must be taken into account when evaluating the impact and extent of benthic sediment plumes. The results highlight that the extent of dispersion of benthic sediment plumes, resulting from mining operations, is significantly reduced by the effects of flocculation, background turbidity and internal tides. The experiments were used as the basis for validation of a numerical dispersion model, which was then used to predict the dispersion of plumes generated by full-scale mining. The plume experiments involved the controlled formation of benthic sediment plumes and measurement of the plume sediment concentration at a specially designed lander placed at set distances from the plume origin. These plume experiments were accompanied by hydrographic and oceanographic field surveys and supported by detailed numerical modelling and high resolution video settling velocity measurements of the in situ sediment undertaken in the laboratory. Here, we present the results of novel in situ deep sea plume experiments undertaken on the Tropic seamount, 300 nautical miles SSW of the Canary Islands. Hence, identifying the behaviour of deep-sea sediment plumes is important in designing mining operations that are ecologically acceptable. The exploitation of these resources will result in adverse ecological effects arising from the direct removal of the substrate and, potentially, from the formation of sediment plumes that could result in deposition of fine sediment on sensitive species or entrainment of sediment, chemicals and nutrients into over-lying waters. Deep sea mining concerns the extraction of poly-metallic nodules, cobalt-rich crusts and sulphide deposits from the ocean floor.
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