Feasibility Study of Crust Mining in the Republic of the Marshall Islands

Yoshio Masuda
RYOKUSEISHA CORPORATION
(MEMBER CRUST STUDY COMMIlTEE, JAPAN RESOURCES ASSOCIATION
ASAHI BDG., 5-29-19,TOKYO, JAPAN)

Michael J. Cruickshank
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII
MARINE MINERALS TECHNOLOGY CENTER
HONOLULU, HI 96813

James A. Abernathy
CONSULTANT
REPUBLIC OF MARSHALL ISLANDS

Ronald Winston
DEVELOPER ON BEHALF OF
REPUBLIC OF MARSHALL ISLANDS
NEW YDRK, NY

Abstract

Cobalt-rich crust has been recovered from seamounts in the

Pacific. The crust is relatively rich in cobalt, nickel, manganese and
platinum and is a potential resource for island countries such as. the
Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). This report, prepared at the
request of the Marshall Islands government addresses cobalt resources
in the RMI, crust mining by continuous line bucket (CLB), processing
by hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid, and an economic estimation
and development proposal.

Crust Resources in Marshall Islands

The Republic of the Marshall Islands is located 6-20 degrees

North, 160-176 degrees East, with a land area of 180 square
kilometers, much of it in the form of coral atolls. The 200 nautical
miles ExclusiveEconomic Zone FEZ) encompasses 1,857,000 Kmz,
in which at least 89 seamounts have been located. A number of
academic research cruises have been conducted in the area, and thick
Figure 1: Candidate crust deposits in RMI
crust deposits have been reported. Data from a recent United States
Geological Survey/Korean Ocean Resources Development Institute
cooperative cruise were used to select a candidate test area. Figure
1 shows the three selected candidate crust deposits in the RMI. Crust Mining CLB Svstem

Two crust mining methods have been seriously proposed to

(1) Labibjet Seamount
Located West of Ujlan Atoll; no sediment; cobble and nodule
fields are abundant; it will be a good CLB test area and potential
mining site.
(3) Sylvania Seamount
Located on North-West of Pikinni Atoll; many dredge records
show thick crust, high in cobalt content, over a wide area.
(5) Jebro Seamount
Located West of Majuro Atoll; two dredge records show good
quality crust; a more detailed survey may confirm a good site.
date. The first utilizes a robot miner (Figure 2.) on a self-propelled
vehicle with rotary cutters feeding an air-lift delivery pipe to a surface
vessel. No detailed design or model tests have been done on this
proposed system which was used to develop a mining scenario for a
recent environmental impact statement dealing with possible crust
mining. The system is quite complex and at present must be regarded
as conceptual only.
The second method is the Continuous Line Bucket (CLB)
system as shown in Figure 3. A long continuous loop of rope with
dragline buckets attached at intervals is rotated in contact with the
seabed and the crust gathered in the buckets is lifted to the ship from
which the bucket line is suspended. The mining ship will navigate in
a circular pattern to avoid entanglement of the two bucket lines. The
system has been successfully tested on a number of occasions

O-7803-02O2-8/91/0000-1475$1.WO 1991 EEE

 Synthetic net
Open and Close

Teeth for bit

Small holes

Figure 4: Crust sampling bucket

In the RMI, weather conditions should allow 11 cruises per

Figure 2: Robotic miner
Figure 3: Turning CLB
Crust deposits are found most commonly as hard irregular
pavements and as loose nodules or cobbles. Loose material will be
the preferred deposit type initially as hard pavement will require
improvements in bucket and system design for its recovery. Some
work on hard substrate buckets has been carried out 'by the U.S.
Bureau of Mines, Twin Cities Research Center but additional
developments will be necessary.
Desien example of CLB
In nodule mining tests carried out during the 7Os, all the
consortia involved designed their mining systems to produce at high
production rates of 3000 to SO00 tons per day to compensate for the
high capital and development costs. The JRA are proposing to start
at a much smaller scale to avoid the high initial outlays and estimate
that a production rate of 400 tons per day of crust material will
provide sufficient return to sustain such an operation. System
components proposed are as follows:
(a) Ship
year with a resulting total production of 88,000 tonlyear. With
annual costs estimated at 1,383,136,000 yen/year ($10,574,000),
mining costs of 15,700 yen/ton ($120/ton) are projected.
Processing
Hydrometallurgicalprocessing has been shown to be suitable
for crust, but many different methods have been proposed. We
selected for this proposal a Hydrogen Peroxide-Sulfuric Acid Leach
which was developed at the U.S. Bureau of Mines, Salt Lake City
Research Center. The method appears to be superior to other
candidates because of its speed, simplicity, product purity, and
freedom from toxic byproducts.
(a) Principle of leaching
The following two-step catalytic cycle could account for rapid
reaction.
H202 + MnO, --. MnO + H,O + 0,
MnO + HzOz+ MnO, HzO+
By adding sulfuric acid to the system

Adaption of an existing cargo vessel of around 15,000 tons. MnO + H,S04 -,MnSO, + H,O
(b) Mining rate The net leaching reaction is,

When bucket volume is 1.785 cubic meter as shown in Figure MnO, + H,O, + H,SO, --. MnSO, + HzO + 0,
4, bucket interval 50 m, rope speed 0.8 m/s with time on the bottom
of 30 seconds for each bucket, production rate should be 400 tlday. and without the need of heating, CO,Ni and Mn are dissolved about
96%.
(c) Rope tension and traction power

If the rope tension on the loaded bucket side is 38 tons, and

on the pay out side is 9.2 tons, traction power requirement is 226
KW net requiring a motor of 380 KW.

(d) Bucket handling

Alternativeplans are for a re-attachable bucket system where
the buckets are separated from the line prior to its passage through
the traction mechanism, or for a non detachable bucket system where
the buckets are retained on the line as it passes through the traction
machine.

Most CLB sea trials have used the re-attachable system, but
recent developments indicate that a non detachable system using a ball
roller parallel drive machine instead of a multi-wheeled traction
device may be safer and less costly.

Mining Cost

Using a 15,O00 ton mining ship with a 400 t/d mining rate,
each production cycle will consist of 26 days of mining operation, 4
days in harbor, totalling 30 days. Figure 5: Ball roller parallel drive traction machine

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(b) Iron removal 1.000.000

m i l l i o n Yer
Fe is eliminated from leach solution in 1 hour by adding milk
of lime

(c) Cobalt Nickel Recovery

Changing temperature on adding H,S, CO and Ni are

precipitated as sulfide, and sent to refinery for next step.

(d) Manganese Recovery

Mn is removed from the solution as Mn carbonate (MnCOJ

by bubbling CO, for 1 hour. This was regarded as the final Mn
product. However, a simple calcining operation would convert the
Mn to MnO, for batteries, or the carbonate could be easily leached in
HCI for electrowinning as Mn metal.

(e) Process Flowsheet

Benificiation of the ore on board the mining vessel to decrease

the volume of material treated would utilize sea water, as would the
on shore processing. Present Harket

(0 Evaluation of Process Waste

(10,000 m i l l i o n yen) I (IO,OOO m i l l i o n yen)
Igew function I
materials1 53.6
Toxicity tests of leach tailings, flotation tailings and Fe-rich new Gonstruction
gypsum precipitates are all well below the EPA limit for extraction 116.1
procedures.
Total I 58.6 I 169.7 I 2.9 I
Processing Cost
Figure 6: Japanese rare metals market estimation for the year 2000
Since cost estimation was difficult from the basic test data (JMC, 1986)
only, we used the information from the Hawaii EIS on cobalt crust
to estimate costs for a 700,000 tlyear processing plant for sulphuric
acid high pressure leaching which is similar to the method selected.
The following assumptions were made: (b) Consumption will exceed supplies
(a) 88,000 tly is 1/8 scale of 700,000 tly. Table c-4 in the EIS was
converted using this scaling factor and most of the operating material At the present time, the supply of cobalt is balanced but
is proportional to this scale ratio. shortages are anticipated soon because of increasing demands and
(b) Some materials, labor, capital, maintenance and repair, and taxes decreasing supplies. Depletion of the deposits of Zambia and Zaire
are proportional to the square root of the scale ratio and the is expected well before the middle of the next century.
processing cost for 88,000 tly in RMI is estimated to be 4,483 million
yen ($33,214 thousand).
Estimation of income bv mo
m
Economic Estimation Using metal market prices in Japan, production from crusts
is estimated as follows.
(a) Increase of demand for metals
Metal Percent Recovery tly Price Income
On account of the rapid advances in the "informationalized" Y IKg 106 Y
society and in the ocean and space business, metallic materials needs
have changed in quality from "traditional construction metals" based CO 0.92% 96% 728.3 5000 3 6 4 0
on steel to "new construction metals" such as super hard tool, and Ni 0.47% 90% 371.7 1300 483
stainless steels which include cobalt, nickel and other exotic elements. Mn02 13.1% x 1.65
In addition, rare metals are given attention for "new 94% 19,150 (Mn) 7,900
functional materials". Non crystallized magnetic materials use cobalt 3 1,600 (Mn02) 25OlKg
to form what is called amorphous metal, very sensitive to magnetism,
and with practical applications in high quality magnets used for
recording heads and high quality transformers. For example in Japan Total 12,020
high quality transformers are necessary to change electrical voltages
and it is said that the value of electricity loss without such When manganese dioxide is not used for batteries, manganese
transformers may be about 100,OOO million yen each year. metal is produced for low carbon ferroalloy, and income will decrease
In addition, the use of cobalt as a catalyst and in compound to 6,520 million yen; if manganese metal is sold, income will be
materials is increasing. Rare metal markets in Japan will triple 7,760 million yen.
between now and the year 2000, and will amount to as much as
1,700,000 million yen as shown in Figure 6.

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ExDense Der vear
Mining cost ________________ 1,380 million yen
Processing cost ------------- 4,480 million yen

Total 5,860 million yen

Profit Der Year

In case where manganese dioxide is sold,

12,020 - 5,860 = 6,160 million yen/y
In case where Mn metal is sold,
-
7,760 5,860 = 1,900 million yen
In case where ferromanganese is sold,
6,520 - 5,860 = 660 million yen

DeveloDment Plan

The plan proposes a 40 t/d CLB mining tests on each of the

candidate deposits on sea mounts Labibjet, Sylvania and Jebro and to
carry out processing tests at 4 t/d and 40 t/d in Majuro. It is
anticipated that the Government of RMI will apply for funding from
appropriate sources.

The small scale CLB mining test and processing tests will
each cost about 500 million yen for a total of 100 million yen.
This is about one tenth of the cost of a commercial system to mine
and process 400 t/d. Such a pilot test at 1/10 scale will save
considerably on development costs and allow for commercial
operations to be planned and started with much reduced risk.

Reference8

Clark, A., and C. Johnson, 1989, Estimation of economic and natural

scientific condition of cobalt rich crust in Republic of the Marshall
Islands: East West Center Report, April 1989.

Hawaii, 1990, Final environmental impact statement for proposed

mineral lease sale in the EEZ adjacent to Hawaii and Johnston Island:
U.S. Minerals Management Service and State of Hawaii, EISEA
MMS 90-0029, August, 2 vols.

JMC, 1986, Report of cobalt crust investigating committee: Japan

Mining Council, unpublished report, June

JRA, 1990, Crust deposit research reports No.1, 2, and 3: Japan

Resources Association, Crust Study Committee, unpublished reports.

USGS-KORDI, 1990, Cooperative research in marine mineral

deposits, Marshall Islands: United States Geological Survey, Korean
Ocean Resources Development Institute, Cooperative Report,
unpublished.

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