Sustainable Deep Sea Mining Transport Plan

Wenbin Ma

Project background

With the significant increase of mineral resources consumption, in the near future only relying on the terrestrial mining could not be able to offer enough mineral resources to support the running of world economy. In 1965, the concept of deep sea mining (DSM) was started up by Jorn L Mero’s book The Mineral Resources of the Sea, where depicts a great amount of reservations of different kinds of mineral resources in the ocean. Since then, DSM is regarded as one of the most effective ways to solve the issue of world mineral resources shortage.  

Project focus

The theme is to design an integral assessment system for DSM transport plan. The integral assessment system takes into considerations of the technological feasibility, economic profitability, environmental impacts, and social aspect existing in DSM industry. The multi-criteria decision making method would be utilized in the final determination of the sustainable transport plan.

Research method

For technological feasibility research, three typical DSM lifting systems are analysed: continuous line bucket lifting, airlifting, and hydraulic lifting with centrifugal pumps. Herein, the DSM vertical lifting efficiency, total energy consumption, and transport performance are analysed. Then, economic profitability is analysed after considering the facilities capital expenditures and operational expenditures. The third import part is DSM environmental impact which covers the sediment plume, species disturbances, tailings disposal, etc. Finally, all these calculation results should be processed undertaking a multi-criteria decision making process to determine the optimal transport plan. Through the whole research, the major research method is by numerical calculation in MATLAB environment.

Funding

This project is funded by China Scholarship Council under grant No. 201506950007.    

Contact person

Wenbin Ma (PhD candidate, Tel: 31 629989942, W.Ma@tudelft.nl), who works in Section of Transport Engineering and Logistics, Department of Maritime and Transport Technology, Delft University of Technology.

Promotor: Prof. Cees van Rhee, who works in Section of Dredging Engineering, Department of Maritime and Transport Technology, Delft University of Technology.

Promotor: Dr. Dingena Schott, who works in Section of Transport Engineering and Logistics, Department of Maritime and Transport Technology, Delft University of Technology.