Page 30: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2024)

FEATURE SEABED MINING bilical. It has passive heave compensation which nulli? es the necott. “The focus since then has been on scaling while en- wave, current and vessel motions that in? uence loads in the suring the lightest environmental impact,” says The Metals power umbilical. The LARS can operate in up to 3.5m wave Company CEO Gerard Barron. In-? eld collection system tri- height signi? cant. The physical connection and disconnection als conducted in 2022 where TMC collected 3,000 tonnes of between collector and power umbilical is performed subsea, nodules have helped further advance the design.

and the LARS is ? tted with a routing system that keeps the Digital twin technology analyzes data gathered from mul- umbilical in a single plane during collector operations. tiple sensors and assets to enable 3D visualization of op-

The collector’s front-mounted Coandã-effect nozzles guide erations in real time. AI modelling can then determine the water over the seabed, creating negative pressure and a suc- environmental impacts of the operation and test how, for tion effect that picks up nodules. A diffuser at the rear creates example, how increasing production rate or collector speed an exit from where the sediment ? ows out, over 90% of which would affect sediment mobilization and enable TMC to stays close to the seabed. The collector is ? tted with low-im- model different scenarios to reduce this impact, says Dr pact tracks, and to further limit sediment disturbance, it has a Greg Stone, Chief Ocean Scientist.

? nes rejection system. Research conducted by Nauru Ocean Resources, a subsid-

This type of technology was ? rst tested successfully in the iary of The Metals Company, found that organisms continue 1970s by major Western corporations like Shell, BP and Ken- to be present and alive 12 months after having been in? uenced

SMD developed the mining machinery planned for the

Solwari 1 sul? des project.

Image courtesy of SMD 30 March/April 2024

MTR #3 (18-33).indd 30 4/4/2024 9:15:02 AM