Solid mineral deposits of the world ocean—potential objects for the development of geotechnologies

The article generalizes information on the seafloor and shelf mineral resources available for deep-sea mining. The higher commercial attractiveness for the industrialscale deep-sea mining belongs to coastal placers on the continental shelf which is best technologically suited for off-shore operations. The near-shore zones of seas and oceans hold the known ilmenite, zirconium, rutile placers; placers of gold and diamonds; cassiteriteand vanadium-bearing sands which are fruitfully extracted by many countries. In recent decades, a new raw material is finding higher commercial value— iron–manganese concretions of the shelf. Such concretions are discovered in all Russian seas at the sea depth of 5–10 to 200–300 m. A high resource potential is a feature of solid minerals, including iron–manganese concretions of the seafloor in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in the Clarion–Clipperton Zone at the depth of 4700 m, where the Russian Federation rents an area of 75000 km2, the cobalt crusts and manganese nodules (northward of Guyots of Magellan Seamounts in the Pacific Ocean) of a total area of 20 thousand km2, and deep-ocean polymetal sulfides (Mid-Atlantic Range) with a total area of 10 thousand km2.

Vilmis A. L., Buyanov M. I., Kalinin I. S., Buyanov M. I.,Tivonenko V. A. Solid mineral deposits of the world ocean—potential objects for the development of geotechnologies. MIAB. Mining Inf. Anal. Bull. 2021;(3-1):147—154. [In Russ]. DOI: 10.25018/0236_1493_2021_31_0_147.

Vilmis A. L.¹, Cand. Sci. (Eng.), head of the Department of geotechnological methods and physical processes of mining;
Buyanov M. I.¹, Cand. Sci. (Eng.), associate professor of department geotechnological methods and physical processes of mining operations;
Kalinin I. S.¹, Cand. Sci. (Eng.), associate professor of department geotechnological methods and physical processes of mining operations;
Tivonenko V. A.¹, post-graduate student of department geotechnological methods and physical processes of mining operations;
¹ Sergo Ordzhonikidze Russian State University for Geological Prospecting, Moscow, Russia.

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