China conducted test mining of polymetals from the seabed at a depth of four kilometers
The Shanghai government announced on Tuesday that China's deep-sea heavy mining vehicle has completed sea trials at depths of more than 4,000 meters. The research has set six records in the field of deep-sea mining, and the technological performance has reached leading domestic and advanced international levels.
During the deep-sea experiment, the Kaituo 2 vehicle successfully completed five consecutive dives in the area of polymetallic nodule and cobalt mining. crusts on the seabed, including one dive to a depth of 4000 meters and four dives to a depth of 2000 meters.
The mining vehicle reached depths of 1802.4 meters, 1929.9 meters, 1955.8 meters, 2048.5 meters and 4102.8 meters, respectively, marking the first time that a domestic deep-sea heavy mining vehicle has carried out trial mining of deep-sea mineral resources at a depth of 4000 meters.
The device also demonstrated powerful underwater drilling and rock collection capabilities during its dives. It has effectively recovered various types of deep-sea minerals, including polymetallic crusts tightly attached to hard rocks and polymetallic nodules embedded in soft deep-sea sediments. More than 200 kilograms of polymetallic crusts, polymetallic nodules and bottom rocks were successfully obtained.
The apparatus achieved six breakthroughs in similar research in China, according to a research team from Shanghai Jiaotong University. For example, for the first time, it reached water depths of more than 4,000 meters for deep-sea heavy mining vehicle deployment operations. It has pioneered highly mobile technology for challenging deep seabed environments and has also pioneered deepwater multi-mineral composite drilling and mining, achieving efficient mining and collection of various types of ores such as polymetallic crusts and polymetallic nodules.
The mining transport is also equipped with an environmental monitoring system that comprehensively monitors and evaluates the environmental impacts of seabed plume formation and propagation, subsea operation noise, etc., providing valuable first-hand materials and data for China's deep-sea mineral resource exploration and production of an environmentally friendly environment.