Sustainable development and its application to mine tailings of deep sea minerals

Abstract

Sustainable development is a commitment being demanded of industry. It will almost certainly be required for a new deep-sea enterprise mining manganese nodules or crusts. One of the areas where sustainable development can most easily be introduced is in the management of tailings from the mineral processing plant. These tailings can be used beneficially. Given the need to use large tonnages of tailings, several large tonnage applications have been studied. These include first and foremost agricultural applications. The second rung of applications includes highway fill, reclamation fill, drilling mud and asphalt and concrete. The third rung of applications would be more specialty applications relying on valuable properties of the tailings themselves. These include plastic and rubber fillers, coatings, and ceramics. All of these applications were successfully tested with manganese tailings. Collectively, they can utilize all of the processing tailings of a deep-sea mining operation, reducing the tailings waste needing land-based disposal to zero.