Cobalt-Rich Crust Mining by Continuous Line Bucket

Cobalt-Rich Crust is an attractive marine resources, it is distributed on sea mountain. Based on many survey works, US Mineral Management Service announced to hold public hearing for prelease of crust deposit in USA EEZ. Selection of mining method is a key point of crust exploitation work. Continious Line Bucket (CLB) has a merit of simplicity than Trailing suction hopper dredge, in particular, recent bucket test ca crust deposit certified relatively easy sepearation crust from substrate. Japan Resources Association organized a crust study Committee from 1984, and studied CLB for crust mining. Our committee wi11 propose to construct small scale CLB machine for survey vessel, and gather few handreds ton of crust for detail sampling and for use test including processing and catalyst use. Feasibility study of crust mining concluded that mining cost of crust will be 15,000 yen/ton by 16,000 ton ship equiped 400 t/d CLB machine. Scale up of ship and mining machine will decrease mining cost to 8,000 yes/t in future.