3- Non-living

Marine Resources

By

Dr. Dalia M. Sabri Bolbol

 Lecture outlines:
By the end of this lecture, you should be able to:

1- Identify the different mineral resources

2- Describe the renewable sources of energy

3- Describe the non-renewable sources of energy

 Non-Living Marine Resources
(Abiotic)

Are any materials found in the marine

environment that are considered to have
value
 Why marine mineral resources?

# Mining large high-grade mineral deposits on land becoming

more difficult to find, while using lower-grade sites have
greater environmental impacts.

# Due to the increase in the global demand

for metals, more resources are required.

# Marine resources with higher grade than land deposits.

 Why marine mineral resources?
# On land, a huge effort is made to expose the minerals unlike
the marine resources.

# Minerals are abundant in water . Therefore mining in water

will elevate the global metal supply.

# With increasing population, the conflict in land-use between

mining industry and housing will increase.
 1- Aggregates
• Marine aggregates are naturally
occurring sediment deposits found on
the coastal areas or the continental
shelf.
• Sands, gravels, shells, shell debris.
• Used in construction.
• Increase in marine aggregates mining
due to the decline of inland resources.
• River and marine aggregates are now
the main sources for building and land
reclamation.
 1- Aggregates

* Used extensively in construction.

In concrete preparation, for each tonne
of cement, six to seven tonnes of sand
and gravel are needed

* Aggregates contribute to 90% of asphalt

pavements, 80% of concrete roads
Aggregates also used in other sectors,
including production of glass, electronics
and land reclamation, shoreline
developments
 1- Aggregates
Extraction and exploration:
Trailing suction hopper dredger

It is used for dredging loose and soft soils such as sand, gravel,
silt or clay. A pump system sucks up a mixture of sand or soil and
water, and discharges it in the hopper or hold of the vessel. Once
fully loaded the vessel sails to the unloading site.
 Negative impact of aggregates mining on the
marine environment
* Extraction has an impact on biodiversity,
water turbidity, water table levels and on
climate.

* Cause coastal erosion, changes in deltaic

structures.

* Decline of protection against extreme

events (flood, drought)
* Has an impact on climate directly
through greenhouse gas emissions from
both the extraction process and the
transport, indirectly through cement
production.
Negative impact of aggregates mining on the
marine environment
* Tourism may be affected through beach erosion.

* Fishing can be affected through destruction of benthic fauna

Marine sand mining has an impact on
seabed flora and fauna. extraction
from the benthic zone destroys
organisms, habitats and ecosystems
Fine aggregate particles rejected by dredging
boats, releasing vast dust plumes and changing
water turbidity, resulting in major changes to
aquatic habitats over large areas
 2- Marine Placer Deposits
* Placer are surfical mineral deposits formed by the mechanical
concentration of mineral particles from weathered debris.
* Marine placers occur in shallow continental shelf environments.
* They have been transported to the seafloor in a solid form.
* They are have been liberated from the breakdown of their
parent rocks.
 2- Marine Placer Deposits

* Marine placers are mostly metallic minerals or gems

* The most important gem placer mineral is diamond.

Gems like; Diamond, Garnet, Ruby, Emerald, Topaz

Heavy noble metals like; Gold, Platinum

Diamond Tin Gold

 Polymetallic mineral deposits
1.Manganese nodules
# Solid mineral masses made up largely of manganese and
iron that form around a hard nucleus and incorporate
metals from the sediment and seawater.

# Occur on the abyssal plains at depths of ≈ 4,000–6,500 m.

Manganese
nodule
 1. Manganese nodules

# In addition to manganese and iron, they contain other

metals of greatest economic interest such as nickel, copper,
and cobalt that can reach between 2.5 - 3 wt%.

# There are enrichments of other valuable metals, such as

molybdenum, vanadium, titanium, and lithium, that have
industrial importance in many high-tech and green-tech
applications.

Manganese
nodule
 2. Cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts

# The crust form on all rock surfaces in the ocean that are free
of sediment and are composed of manganese oxides and
iron oxyhydroxides that precipitate directly from seawater.

# The crust thickness varies from less than 1 mm - 20 cm.

# They form at water depths

of 600–7,000 m on the flanks
of volcanic seamounts, ridges,
and plateaus.
 2. Cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts

# Cobalt is the metal of greatest economic interest

# Crusts have lower copper and nickel concentrations than
manganese nodules.
# Potential by-products are the rare earth elements, platinum,
tellurium.

# Mining of crusts is very difficult

as crusts are attached to a substrate
rock.
Negative impact of minerals mining on the
marine environment
# The disaggregation of the ore at the mining site, and lifting
the rocks to the surface vessel, may lead to loss of habitat.

# The formation of plumes and resedimentation, and water

discharge may affect pelagic and benthic fauna depending on
the depth of discharge.

# Pollution from ships, noise from

surface or seabed vehicles have
negative impacts on the environment.

# Some ecosystems may take thousands

of years to recover to the original species richness and
distribution.
Non-conventional resources: Conventional resources:
Tidal energy, wave energy Oil, Gas
 Renewable energy?
Renewable energy is energy produced
from sources that do not deplete or can be
replenished within a human's life time.
 Marine renewable energies
MREs are mechanical energies from the movement of
water bodies such as tidal, currents, waves energies,

Physico-chemical energies; temperature gradients

between the surface and the depths (Ocean Thermal Energy
Conversion – OTEC), salinity gradients
 1- Tidal Energy

Hydro power converts energy from the natural

rise and fall of water level into electricity

Tide occurs when the ocean

rises and falls in response to
gravitational forces from the
moon and the sun and the
rotation of the earth
 #Main Tidal Technologies#
(A)
Tidal
Barrages

It is a dam that utilises the energy generated by the

change between high and low tides
The energy turn the turbines that produces electricity
 #Main Tidal Technologies#
(B)
Tidal
Fences

-It is a fence composed of individual vertical axis turbines

- Operate like a giant turn style that completely block a channel

forcing all of water to pass through them
 #Main Tidal Technologies#
(C)
Tidal
Turbines

-It is a method uses the mechanical energy of tidal currents that

turns the turbines to generate electricity.

- The generators connected to the turbines could be fixed to the

seabed or floating platforms
 2- OTEC Energy

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a

process that can produce electricity by using the
temperature difference between deep cold ocean
water and warm surface waters.

OTEC plants pump large quantities of deep cold

seawater and surface seawater to run a power cycle
and produce electricity.
The ocean’s
worm
surface
water
vaporize a
working
fluid
(Ammonia)
The vapor expands and spin the turbine and
collected by the generator to produce
electricity
The vapors
are cooled
by the cold
deep sea
water
The
working
fluid is
condensed
back into a
liquid
The working fluid is reused to make a
continuous electricity generating cycle
Conventional energy?

Exhaustible or non-renewable
energy such as Oil and Gas
 1. Petroleum
It is a fossil fuel, which is formed when large quantities of
dead organisms are buried underneath sedimentary
rock and subjected to heat and pressure.

It is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid found

in geological formations beneath the Earth's surface.
 1. Petroleum
*It contains a mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular
weights

*These components are separated

by fractional distillation, to separate
the liquid mixture into fractions
differing in boiling point

*These fuels such as gasoline, kerosene,

Diesel and some other chemical reagents
used in plastics, pesticides and
Pharmaceuticals industries.

*The world consumption about 95 million barrels/day.

 1. Petroleum
Petroleum is mostly recovered by oil drilling, then refined
to various components
 2. Natural Gas
* It is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon gas mixture,
primarily methane, and other hydrocarbons,
carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide,
or helium.

*Natural gas is found in deep underground

rock formations or associated with other
hydrocarbon reservoirs in coal beds such as
methane clathrates and Petroleum.
 3. Methane Hydrate
Is a solid clathrate compound in which a
large amount of methane is trapped within
a crystal structure of water, forming a solid
similar to ice.
 3. Methane Hydrate
Methane precipitation occurs when it comes in contact
with water within the seabed at a low temperature and
a high pressure.

The sea floor is an ideal location

for its formation with temperatures
from 0 to 4ºC.

Below a water depth ≈350 m, the pressure is sufficient

to stabilize the hydrates.
 Negative impact of fossil fuels on the
environment

1-The extensive use of fossil fuel as a source of energy causes;

*Global warming by releasing carbon dioxide (a greenhouse

gas) when it burns.

*Ocean acidification caused by the increased uptake of carbon

dioxide from the atmosphere. That have a negative impact
on the marine life

2- Offshore exploration and extraction disturbs the

surrounding marine ecosystem
 References
* Global aggregates information network (GAIN), Newsletter 4, January 2019.

* Jan Harff, Martin Meschede, Sven Petersen, JÖrn Thiede (2016), Encyclopedia of Marine
Geosciences: Marine Mineral Resources, SpringerLink, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-
6238-1_27

* Gerard V. Middleton, Michael J. Church, Mario Coniglio, Lawrence A. Hardie, Frederick

J. Longstaffe (2013), Placers, marine, Encyclopedia of Sediments and Sedimentary
Rocks, SpringerLink, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-3609-5_160

* André Monaco, Patrick Prouzet Marine (2014), Renewable Energies, In :Development of

Marine Resources book, ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Great Britain.