Detecting precious material mines used as solar cells under the seabed

British scientists have discovered a mountain beneath the Atlantic Ocean containing a rare treasure of minerals.

According to the group's survey, located over 500km (300 miles) from the Canary Islands discovered a layer of extremely rich metal ore. Samples from the surface of this area contain tellurium , a scarce substance at concentrations 50,000 times higher than normal.

Tellurium is used in an advanced solar panel, so the discovery poses a difficult question that promoting the use of renewable energy can encourage the exploitation of this mineral from Bottom of the sea. In addition, the soil layer also contains rare earth elements used in wind turbines and electronic equipment.

The sea floor is hiding many valuable resources.

Known as the tropic underground , the mountain is about 3,000m high with a large plateau above it, about 1000m below the ocean surface. Using robotic submarines, researchers from the British National Oceanographic Center found that the crust is black and consists of fine particles stretching in a layer about 4cm thick over the entire surface of the mountain. .

Dr. Bram Murton, the chief of the expedition, told the BBC that he had expected to find abundant minerals on this mountain but not in such concentration."The shells are rich in rare materials and that's what makes these stones so special and valuable from a resource perspective." He calculated that 2,670 tons of tellurium on this mountain is equivalent to a twelfth of the total world supply. And Dr. Murton made a hypothetical estimate that if all of the minerals could be extracted and used to make solar panels, it could meet 65% of the UK's electricity needs.

He said that he does not support deep-sea exploitation that has not yet begun anywhere in the world and is likely to be controversial because of the damage it can cause to the marine environment. But Dr. Murton does not want his team's discovery, part of a major research project called MarineE-Tech , to trigger a debate about new energy resources. If we need to supply clean energy, we need materials to make those energy-producing devices, the problem is that the material must come from somewhere. We can choose to exploit them off the ground and create a huge hole or exploit them from the sea floor and create a relatively smaller hole. It is a difficult situation for society - nothing we do without an input cost.

Scientists are currently considering the relative risks and values ​​of land and seafloor exploitation. The mine on the ground often requires that the forest and the village be removed, the top layer of rock must be removed and the roads or railways built to extract the ore with relatively weak concentrations. In contrast, mines on the seabed will extract richer ore, including a smaller area and do not have an immediate impact on people - but instead it can kill marine life anywhere Excavators are deployed and capable of devastating a larger area.

Sea bottom mining model is now applied.

A major concern is the effect of the dust cloud being stirred up by the ocean floor mining process, spreading to long distances and covering all related ecosystems. To understand the significance of the problem, the Tropic expedition team conducted a first experiment of this type, to simulate the effects of mining and to measure the cluster of associated consequences.

Deployed from James Cook research vessel, a remote control car intentionally pumped out hundreds of liters of sediment water every minute while other robot sensors are located downstream in the ocean. According to Dr. Murton, the initial results show that dust is difficult to detect at 1km from the source of the suction pump, suggesting that the impact of mining may be more localized than many fear. But this is when different disciplines in marine science are arguing with a series of views on this issue.

A study by Dr. Daniel Jones, examining evidence of seabed exploration and finding that in the context of many marine life exploitation, may recover within a year but it will be very difficult to return to the same level. Their advance even after two decades.

Another study focused on the upper microorganisms of the Pacific Ocean in an area called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone , which stretches in a southern belt of Hawaii.

Much of this area has been licensed by the United Nations International Seabed for companies from more than a dozen countries to search for minerals in small sized rocks located on the seabed.

Many seabed areas in the world are being exploited.

Professor Andy Gooday and colleagues discovered that one of the metal-rich rocks, has a much larger variety of single-celled organisms called xenophyophores than previously thought. Their research identified 34 of these species as life forms and completely new to modern science.

Organisms occupy one of the lower rungs of the food chain and can also play an important role by forming structures such as small coral reefs, providing habitat for other organisms.

Professor Gooday says that the scope of life in deep ocean sediments can be compared to a tropical rainforest and that "the life on the ocean floor is more dynamic than anyone could imagine."

He believes it is unlikely that exploiting the seabed will cause species extinction, but that will have serious local effects. If removing the xenophyphores that are very fragile and will surely be destroyed by mining, it will destroy the structure of the environment for other organisms.

"It's hard to predict and it seems that everything in the deep sea is tied to the effects of mining that we need to learn more. We still know very little about what's happening down there. ".