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Deep-sea ferromanganese deposits and their resource potentials for India

DRS at CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography

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Title Deep-sea ferromanganese deposits and their resource potentials for India
 
Creator Banakar, V.K.
 
Subject ferromanganese
mineral deposits
seamounts
seabed
 
Description Due to rapidly depleting land-based mineral resources, oceanic mineral deposits gain greater significance. Ferromanganese deposits on the seabed (nodules) and seamounts (crusts) known for the enrichment of several transition metals were discovered during pioneering expeditions of H. M. S. Challenger during 1872-76. The metal contents in these deposits show large variations from basin to basin. For India, the Cu and Ni (approx. 1% each) in nodules and Co (approx. 0.7%) and Pt (approx. 0.5 ppm) in seamount crusts recovered from the Indian Ocean are important. The hydrogenous crusts are not only important as economically valuable deposits of Co and Pt, but also are potential paleoceanographic repositories. Ferromanganese nodule exploration by India began in 1981 and concluded with recognition by the International Seabed Authority as a Pioneer Investor in 1987. This exploration license provides India with exclusive exploration rights over an area of 150,000 sq. km (Pioneer Area) in the Central Indian Ocean. Nearly 700 million tonnes of nodule resources are estimated in this mine site, which are expected to contain around 14 million tonnes of combined Cu and Ni metals valued approximately over Rs. 1000 billion at current average market rate. Quantitative resource evaluation for seamount ferromanganese crusts is not yet available due to limited exploratory work. However, a promising area of Co-Pt enriched ferromanganese crust occurrence has been discovered on the Afanasiy-Nikitin Seamounts in the Eastern Equatorial Indian Ocean by NIO scientists, which contains Co upto 0.9 % and Pt upto 1 ppm
 
Date 2011-03-07T05:51:00Z
2011-03-07T05:51:00Z
2010
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Journal of the Indian Institute of Science, vol.90(4); 2010; 535-541
http://drs.nio.org/drs/handle/2264/3798
 
Language en
 
Rights Copyright [2010]. All efforts have been made to respect the copyright to the best of our knowledge. Inadvertent omissions, if brought to our notice, stand for correction and withdrawal of document from this repository.
 
Publisher Indian Institute of Science