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Marine Minerals of the Deep Sea: Mineralogy, Crystallography and Their...
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Marine Minerals of the Deep Sea: Mineralogy, Crystallography and Their Use for Tailored Processing and Metal Extraction

A special issue of Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X). This special issue belongs to the section "Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2018) | Viewed by 30740

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Carsten Rühlemann

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Federal Institute of Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Hannover, Germany
Interests: deep-sea environment; manganese nodule exploration; marine policy
Dr. Thomas Kuhn

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Federal Institute of Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Hannover, Germany
Interests: geochemistry, mineralogy and economy of deep sea deposits; methods of metal extraction

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Interests in deep-sea mining of mineral deposits, such as polymetallic manganese nodules, cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts, and seafloor massive sulphides, to secure mankind’s future demand for raw materials have increased steadily during the last decade, fueled by rapid advancements in the establishment of international legislation and mining technologies. This surge of interest has concurrently boosted the need for developing effective methods of extraction of both main and trace metals. However, to develop tailored extraction methods detailed knowledge of the crystallography and the structural position of the metals of interest are necessary. This Special Issue welcomes papers that focus on all aspects of mineralogy, crystallography and extraction methods of the various deep-sea mineral deposits.

Dr. Carsten Rühlemann
Dr. Thomas Kuhn
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Minerals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Marine mineral deposits
  • Manganese nodules
  • Ferromanganese crusts
  • Seafloor massive sulfides
  • Marine phosphorites
  • Ferromanganese oxides
  • Processing and metallurgy of marine minerals

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

42 pages, 10828 KiB  
Article
Hydrogenetic, Diagenetic and Hydrothermal Processes Forming Ferromanganese Crusts in the Canary Island Seamounts and Their Influence in the Metal Recovery Rate with Hydrometallurgical Methods
by Egidio Marino, Francisco Javier González, Thomas Kuhn, Pedro Madureira, Anna V. Wegorzewski, Jose Mirao, Teresa Medialdea, Martin Oeser, Catarina Miguel, Jesús Reyes, Luis Somoza and Rosario Lunar
Minerals 2019, 9(7), 439; https://doi.org/10.3390/min9070439 - 17 Jul 2019
Cited by 37 | Viewed by 8340
Abstract
Four pure hydrogenetic, mixed hydrogenetic-diagenetic and hydrogenetic-hydrothermal Fe-Mn Crusts from the Canary Islands Seamount Province have been studied by Micro X-Ray Diffraction, Raman and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy together with high resolution Electron Probe Micro Analyzer and Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry [...] Read more.
Four pure hydrogenetic, mixed hydrogenetic-diagenetic and hydrogenetic-hydrothermal Fe-Mn Crusts from the Canary Islands Seamount Province have been studied by Micro X-Ray Diffraction, Raman and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy together with high resolution Electron Probe Micro Analyzer and Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry in order to find the correlation of mineralogy and geochemistry with the three genetic processes and their influence in the metal recovery rate using an hydrometallurgical method. The main mineralogy and geochemistry affect the contents of the different critical metals, diagenetic influenced crusts show high Ni and Cu (up to 6 and 2 wt. %, respectively) (and less Co and REY) enriched in very bright laminae. Hydrogenetic crusts on the contrary show High Co and REY (up to 1 and 0.5 wt. %) with also high contents of Ni, Mo and V (average 2500, 600 and 1300 μg/g). Finally, the hydrothermal microlayers from crust 107-11H show their enrichment in Fe (up to 50 wt. %) and depletion in almost all the critical elements. One hydrometallurgical method has been used in Canary Islands Seamount Province crusts in order to quantify the recovery rate of valuable elements in all the studied crusts except the 107-11H, whose hydrothermal critical metals’ poor lamina were too thin to separate from the whole crust. Digestion treatment with hydrochloric acid and ethanol show a high recovery rate for Mn (between 75% and 81%) with respect to Fe (49% to 58%). The total recovery rate on valuable elements (Co, Ni, Cu, V, Mo and rare earth elements plus yttrium (REY)) for the studied crusts range between 67 and 92% with the best results for Co, Ni and V (up to 80%). The genetic process and the associated mineralogy seem to influence the recovery rate. Mixed diagenetic/hydrogenetic crust show the lower recovery rate for Mn (75%) and Ni (52.5%) both enriched in diagenetic minerals (respectively up to 40 wt. % and up to 6 wt. %). On the other hand, the presence of high contents of undigested Fe minerals (i.e., Mn-feroxyhyte) in hydrogenetic crusts give back low recovery rate for Co (63%) and Mo (42%). Finally, REY as by-product elements, are enriched in the hydrometallurgical solution with a recovery rate of 70–90% for all the studied crusts. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Minerals of the Deep Sea: Mineralogy, Crystallography and Their Use for Tailored Processing and Metal Extraction)
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13 pages, 2893 KiB  
Article
“Zero-Waste”: A Sustainable Approach on Pyrometallurgical Processing of Manganese Nodule Slags
by Marcus Sommerfeld, David Friedmann, Thomas Kuhn and Bernd Friedrich
Minerals 2018, 8(12), 544; https://doi.org/10.3390/min8120544 - 23 Nov 2018
Cited by 32 | Viewed by 7805
Abstract
A continuously growing demand for valuable non-ferrous metals and therefore an increase in their prices at the metal exchanges makes it necessary and profitable to investigate alternative metal resources. Polymetallic deep-sea nodules contain cobalt, copper, manganese, molybdenum and nickel, and are highly abundant [...] Read more.
A continuously growing demand for valuable non-ferrous metals and therefore an increase in their prices at the metal exchanges makes it necessary and profitable to investigate alternative metal resources. Polymetallic deep-sea nodules contain cobalt, copper, manganese, molybdenum and nickel, and are highly abundant on the sea floor. Developing a metallurgical process to recover the metal content from manganese nodules can close the predicted supply gap of critical metals like cobalt. This paper investigated a potential extraction process for valuable metals from manganese nodules supplied by the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources. The samples originated from the German license area of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean. Due to a low concentration of valuable metals in nodules, a pyrometallurgical enrichment step was carried out to separate cobalt, copper, molybdenum and nickel in a metallic phase. The manganese was discarded in the slag and recovered in a second smelting step as ferromanganese. To aid the experiments, FactSageTM was used for thermodynamic modeling of the smelting steps. To increase metal yields and to alter the composition of the metal alloys, different fluxes were investigated. The final slag after two reduction steps were heavy-metal free and a utilization as a mineral product was desired to ensure a zero-waste process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Minerals of the Deep Sea: Mineralogy, Crystallography and Their Use for Tailored Processing and Metal Extraction)
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16 pages, 5229 KiB  
Article
Thermal Pre-Treatment of Polymetallic Nodules to Create Metal (Ni, Cu, Co)-Rich Individual Particles for Further Processing
by Anna V. Wegorzewski, Martin Köpcke, Thomas Kuhn, Maria A. Sitnikova and Hermann Wotruba
Minerals 2018, 8(11), 523; https://doi.org/10.3390/min8110523 - 11 Nov 2018
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 5489
Abstract
Polymetallic nodules are a potential source of industrially demanded metals such as Ni, Co, Cu, and Mo (up to 3 wt %). Even if there is no deep-sea mining of manganese nodules today, a forecasted gap between metal demand and supply as well [...] Read more.
Polymetallic nodules are a potential source of industrially demanded metals such as Ni, Co, Cu, and Mo (up to 3 wt %). Even if there is no deep-sea mining of manganese nodules today, a forecasted gap between metal demand and supply as well as continuously high metal prices may make seabed mining economically viable in the future. Up to now, a well-established industrial-scale extraction method for manganese nodules has been missing. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore how economically interesting metals can be extracted from the nodules in a cost- and energy-efficient way. Polymetallic nodules have a heterogeneous chemical and structural composition without individual metal-rich particles. The economically interesting metals are distributed between different mineral phases (Mn-Fe-(oxy)hydroxides) as well as different growth structures that are intergrown with each other on a nm‒µm scale. Because of that a typical ore processing with the beneficiation of valuable particles is not feasible. The process presented here starts with a pyro-metallurgical pre-treatment of the polymetallic nodules, with the aim of creating artificial metal-rich (Ni, Cu, Co, Mo) particles with enrichment factors up to 10 compared to the original average metal contents. Afterwards, these particles should be beneficiated by conventional mineral processing steps to create a concentrate while reducing the mass stream in the process. The resulting metal particles can be further treated in conventional hydrometallurgical and/or pyro-metallurgical processes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Minerals of the Deep Sea: Mineralogy, Crystallography and Their Use for Tailored Processing and Metal Extraction)
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16 pages, 2661 KiB  
Article
Microwave and Ultrasound Effect on Ammoniacal Leaching of Deep-Sea Nodules
by Anna Knaislová, Hong Ng. Vu and Petr Dvořák
Minerals 2018, 8(8), 351; https://doi.org/10.3390/min8080351 - 14 Aug 2018
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3189
Abstract
The influence of ultrasound and microwaves on extraction of copper, nickel, and cobalt from manganese deep-sea nodules by reductive ammoniacal leaching in the presence of ammonium thiosulfate as a reducing agent was studied. The ultrasonic ammoniacal leaching provides higher metals extraction, while the [...] Read more.
The influence of ultrasound and microwaves on extraction of copper, nickel, and cobalt from manganese deep-sea nodules by reductive ammoniacal leaching in the presence of ammonium thiosulfate as a reducing agent was studied. The ultrasonic ammoniacal leaching provides higher metals extraction, while the effect of microwaves on the metals extraction under the studied leaching conditions is insignificant. In general, increasing leaching temperature increases significantly extraction of the metals of interest. At high temperatures, extraction efficiencies of copper, nickel, and cobalt decrease over longer leaching duration as a result of decomposition of the metals amino-complexes and reverse precipitation of metals. However, during the ultrasonic leaching at a temperature of 85 °C, the extraction of nickel remains almost unchanged over longer leaching durations and does not follow the decreasing course, observed in the extraction of copper and cobalt. The finding suggests that nickel can be selectively extracted from the nodules by the ultrasonic leaching. The maximal extraction efficiency of copper, nickel, and cobalt was 83%, 71%, and 32%, respectively, when the reductive ultrasonic ammoniacal leaching was carried out at 85 °C for 90 min. In the presence of microwaves, the maximal extraction efficiency of copper, nickel, and cobalt was 67%, 48%, and 8%, respectively, when the reductive ultrasonic ammoniacal leaching was carried out at the output power of 60 W for 210 min. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Minerals of the Deep Sea: Mineralogy, Crystallography and Their Use for Tailored Processing and Metal Extraction)
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14 pages, 2359 KiB  
Article
Galvanic Leaching of Seafloor Massive Sulphides Using MnO2 in H2SO4-NaCl Media
by Przemyslaw B. Kowalczuk, Dan Oliric Manaig, Kristian Drivenes, Ben Snook, Kurt Aasly and Rolf Arne Kleiv
Minerals 2018, 8(6), 235; https://doi.org/10.3390/min8060235 - 30 May 2018
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 5087
Abstract
This paper reports the leaching of seafloor massive sulphides (SMS) from the Loki’s Castle area at the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge in sulphuric acid with manganese dioxide and sodium chloride. The results presented are of various leaching experiments conducted under different conditions in order [...] Read more.
This paper reports the leaching of seafloor massive sulphides (SMS) from the Loki’s Castle area at the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge in sulphuric acid with manganese dioxide and sodium chloride. The results presented are of various leaching experiments conducted under different conditions in order to optimise the dissolution of copper and silver. It was shown that the main copper bearing minerals in the SMS were chalcopyrite and isocubanite, while silver could occur as an admixture in the crystallographic lattice of sulphides or as disseminated micro inclusions. Based on the results, the leaching mechanism was discussed and elucidated. It was shown that the dissolution of the SMS was mainly due to galvanic interactions between the primary marine minerals of SMS and manganese dioxide. Addition of sodium chloride promoted the extraction mechanism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Minerals of the Deep Sea: Mineralogy, Crystallography and Their Use for Tailored Processing and Metal Extraction)
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