Han Peacock calculated the things in his hands. It was not unknown, but he was shocked when he calculated that his collection was enough to support a world-class mining expo. <[?网
Han Kongque has never seen what other hydrothermal areas look like, so he can't explain why there are so many rhodochrosites here. However, it is true that the black chimneys that bring out the ore here are not so violent.
Although the terrain here is complex and hydrothermal fluid flows across the area, Han Peacock is protected by the shield brought by the chaotic space, but it is not affected at all.
"Submarines don't dare to enter here at will, right?"
In recent years, on the shallow seabed, some countries have begun to use submarines to sample and retrieve sand from the seabed, observe the seabed conditions, and use unmanned bulldozers to collect sand on the seabed to improve the production capacity and recovery rate of sand mining ships.
But in such a deep sea area, even if a submarine dares to come in, there is no way for the submarine to work in such a complicated situation in Haiti.
There are several places where hydrothermal fluid spurts violently. Even Han Peacock cannot get close to it because the driving force of the seawater is too great. Even if he is not afraid of high-temperature seawater, he cannot withstand the crazy spewing of hydrothermal fluid from the seabed.
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"The ocean current in the central area is so strong, no matter what it is, it can't be cooled down and the ore will precipitate, right?"
Han Peacock tried again, but felt that he could no longer get closer to the black chimney, so he stopped trying in vain.
Now Han Peacock's feet were all covered with soft mud on the sea floor, and he could still see some solid metal minerals from time to time. He slowly groped around, layer by layer, around the black chimneys on the sea floor, looking for everything he could see.
Han Peacock has a drawing in his hand with various directions marked in circles, and every once in a while, Han Peacock will collect some specimens.
Whether it is sea water, seabed soft mud, or solid ore, Han Peacock does not understand these things, but after bringing them out of the water, you can ask experts to identify them to see how many minerals are contained here and whether they are worth mining.
Han Peacock collected some of the beautiful ores separately, while he marked some of the dingy ones into categories for future mining.
Because this seabed was so huge, Han Peacock didn't care about anything except sending a signal to tell his bodyguards that he was safe.
In this way, Han Kongque stayed at the bottom of the sea for half a month. Whenever he got tired, he would go to the Chaos Space to rest and have private meetings with Liu Xu and other women. In this way, he was neither lonely nor delayed in his work.
The various seabed ores he produced have attracted the attention of Liu Xu, Zhou Mei and Qin Mingyue. After all, women are not attracted to beautiful things, so recently, even Han Peacock has been a little happy to miss Shu.
After half a month, Han Peacock had collected almost everything that could be collected. At this time, Han Peacock thought about returning to the ship.
"Now that we are here, how can we not look for some corals?" Han Peacock looked at the dark seabed. This hydrothermal area is definitely not suitable for coral growth.
Han Peacock began to explore like a shallow sea. This hydrothermal area is within the range of 1,500 to 3,000 meters underwater. An average submarine cannot reach such a deep seabed.
It is also because there are many ravines and ravines here and the environment is very complex, so various ores are formed here. Otherwise, it will only form veins or a piece of metal ooze.
"Huh? What's in this trench?" After Han Peacock walked a long distance, he found a trench with a lot of ore deposited in it.
However, these ores are very limey and look like dung balls.
Han Peacock got close and picked up one. It was still very heavy and seemed to be a metal mineral.
Han Peacock picked up the ore that looked like a metal ball in his hand. It was very tight, and under the illumination of the light, the surface glowed with a trace of golden light.
"Is it a gold mine?" Han Kongque was a little happy, but he soon learned that it might also be a copper mine.
"Are these manganese nodules?" Han Peacock thought carefully. The only spherical ores on the seabed are manganese nodules, and only this kind of ore exists in large quantities.
Manganese nodules are also called polymetallic nodules, manganese ore balls, manganese ore clusters, manganese nodules, etc. They are a collection of iron and manganese oxides, often black or brown-black in color.
Manganese nodules have various shapes, including spherical, oval, potato-shaped, grape-shaped, flat, slag-shaped, etc.
The size of manganese nodules also varies greatly, ranging from a few microns to tens of centimeters, and the largest one weighs tens of kilograms.
"There were hydrothermal explosions on the seafloor around it, so various minerals from the seawater were deposited in this trench, forming so many manganese nodules? How many of these are there?"
Han Peacock quickly deduced how the manganese nodules here were formed. With this idea in mind, Han Peacock just briefly calculated the length, width and depth of this trench, and was stunned by the ore here.
The entire trench is full of manganese nodules! No wonder countries all over the world are drooling looking at the ocean. It is indeed rich in resources.
Ever since the British first discovered manganese nodules in the Atlantic Ocean in 1873, the world's major powers have never given up on research and collection of manganese nodules.
In the 1960s, some industrially developed countries had begun to investigate deep seabed mineral resources and research mining technologies.
Known deep-sea seabed mineral resources are mainly manganese nodules, and polymetallic ooze containing gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, etc. is found in some sea areas.
In recent years, eight multinational consortiums have been established, and about one hundred companies are engaged in exploration and trial mining.
China has carried out investigation and research work in recent years and has repeatedly collected manganese nodules in the Pacific Ocean.
Manganese nodules are spherical nodules containing manganese, iron, copper, nickel, cobalt and more than 20 other rare elements. They are widely distributed on the surface of the ocean floor at depths of 2,000 to 6,000 in the world's oceans.
The nodules in the central Pacific have the highest grade and the largest reserves. The grades of nickel, cobalt, and copper in manganese nodules in some sea areas are higher than those of the ore deposits mined in 6 places.
The total reserves of manganese nodules at the bottom of the world's oceans are about three trillion tons. The Pacific Ocean alone has about 17,000 billion tons. Its reserves are constantly growing. At the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, it can increase by about 10 million tons every year.
Although countries around the world covet manganese nodules, there are not many manganese nodules that can actually be collected.
In the late 1970s, manganese nodules were fished out from the seabed on a continuous rope sand mining vessel by continuously rotating an endless rope with many drag buckets.
The sand mining ship moves slowly laterally, allowing several towing buckets to operate continuously on a certain width at the same time.
In the 1970s, a pressurized air-lift liquid sand mining vessel was used to test mine manganese nodules on the ocean floor at a depth of 500. The pressurized air entered the sand suction pipe at a depth of no more than 100. A hydraulic sand mining ship was also used to test mining on the ocean bottom at 18o. Deep-sea mining
Sand ships are equipped with equipment and survey instruments such as water depth control, underwater photography and television, but they have not been put into industrial production.
In 1963, the British research ship "Discover" discovered polymetallic sludge in the Red Sea. In the late 1970s, polymetallic sulfides containing copper, zinc, silver and other elements were discovered in the Eastern Pacific. However, industrial mining was not carried out.
China began investigating oceanic manganese nodules in the mid-1970s. In 1978, the "Xiangyanghong O5" oceanographic research vessel fished out manganese nodules for the first time at a depth of 4,000 meters in the Pacific Ocean.
Since then, Chinese marine survey ships engaged in oceanic manganese nodule exploration include "Xiangyanghong 16", "Xiangyanghong O9", "Haiyang O4", "Dayang 1", etc.
After years of investigation and exploration, a rich ore area with recoverable reserves of 2 billion tons has been discovered in the central Pacific Ocean area southwest of Hawaii, between 7 degrees and 13 degrees north latitude and 138 degrees and 157 degrees west longitude.
"Could this be the manganese nodule-rich area in southwest Hawaii?" Thinking of this information, Han Peacock smiled. He was really lucky, and he was able to get here unintentionally.
If Hawaii is really a manganese nodule rich area, then these manganese nodules seen by Han Peacock must be the tip of the iceberg.
"These manganese nodules should belong to the United States, right?" Hawaii belongs to the United States, and the Americans who want to come here should also take over it. In this case, the Korean peacocks will not have any pressure to collect them.
Han Peacock directly opened the space door and aimed at the manganese nodule ore in the trench. Under the strong water pressure, the seawater on the seabed, together with the seabed ore, were all washed into the chaotic space.
As long as Han Peacock slightly adjusts the angle of the space door, he can easily let the sea water drive more manganese nodules and rush into the chaotic space.
Taking advantage of the gap between the chaotic space and the pressure on the seafloor, Han Kongque successfully impacted all the manganese nodules in the entire trench into the chaotic space.
"If I had to move it by myself, I don't know how many years and months it would take to complete it, but using the pressure of sea water, I could easily complete the transportation work."
Han Peacock looked at the trench that had widened and deepened a lot with a smile on his face.
If rhodochrosite was not too small and too delicate, Han Kongque would have wanted to collect it this way. At that time, he just thought about it, but he was not willing to collect gems so wildly.
Faced with the spherical manganese nodule ore, Han Peacock had no scruples, and he only used it for a few hours to hollow out a huge trench. This kind of efficiency was the same as the one he used for half a month.
The amount of ore collected is completely incomparable.
"A lot of seawater has also been collected, plus those manganese nodules. In the past few hours, tens of thousands of tons of the earth's walls have been dug up, right?"
Han Peacock calculated that the manganese nodules collected just now are only a few thousand tons, right?
"Since you're here, let's collect more." Anyway, Korean Peacock needs both seawater and manganese nodules, so he doesn't mind staying longer.
Nowadays, all the major powers in the world are competing for resources. Minerals such as steel, copper, gold and silver, which were once popular in price comparison, no longer have much strategic value. Instead, due to the rise of the electronics industry, the status of various rare elements has soared.
, especially rare earth elements.
However, rare elements that are not very advantageous on the land are found everywhere in the ocean, such as manganese nodules, which contain many. (To be continued.) 8