Mining the deep ocean
摘要
2022年，加拿大企业The Metals Company在太平洋海底成功测试了一台重逾70吨的深海采集机，它能在超过13000英尺深的海底行驶并吸集富含铜、锰、钴和镍的结核矿石。该公司正计划在6.5万平方公里海域进行商业化开采，目标获取超6亿吨结核。目前，全球共有31个由企业、政府及国有企业主导的类似项目正在推进，旨在分析结核样本并测试采矿设备。
More than 13,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, a more-than-70-ton machine trundled like a tank on its caterpillar tracks for a tenth of a mile—sucking up potato-sized nodules of rock packed with copper, manganese, cobalt, and nickel. It was 2022, and that pilot run of a subsea harvester by a Canadian business, The Metals Company, was pronounced a success.
The company is working to get a green light to deploy similar machines for commercial harvesting over an area of 65,000 square kilometers, to extract over 600 million metric tons of nodules.
There are riches on the ocean floor—round deposits made up of tightly packed layers of critical minerals that have long been out of reach. But not anymore. The pursuits of The Metals Company are among 31 initiatives by companies, governments and state-owned enterprises—including China, India, and the Republic of Nauru, a tiny island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean—to collect nodules for analysis and to test mining equipment.
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