Page 33: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2024)

regulated industry in the world.” How- ever, commercial success depends on many factors, not least a predictable

OPEX. Over the past four years, SMD has worked with Oil States Industries to calculate cost per tonne ? gures for prospective customers.

Patania II uses jet water pumps to

Oil States’ Merlin riser systems were lift nodules into a collection drum.

successfully deployed on both the TMC / Allseas and JAMSTEC 2022 pilot projects. They also hold a world record water depth for a producing riser sys- tem of 14,764 feet.

Impossible Metals is developing a nod- ule collector, unlike other technologies, is untethered and hovers above the sea- bed, picking nodules with robotic arms.

CEO Oliver Gunasekara cites three unique developments: the battery-oper- ated buoyancy engine, fast-acting robot- ic arms and the AI algorithms that guide them, identifying and avoiding nodules with visible life present.

A second-generation collector, Eureka

II, is currently being tested off the US east coast. It has three arms, but the

Images courtesy of GSR much larger Eureka III will have 16 arms. Gunasekara estimates that a ? eet of around 16 of these autonomous col- lectors would be a break-even point for commercial operations, with scale up from there possible gradually.

Hundreds of collectors can be de- ployed concurrently. Once a collector has achieved its 6,000kg payload, it can return to the surface, and as the surface vessel reaches capacity, it can return to shore while the collectors continue to load on a second vessel.

There is no sediment release mid-water like the other technologies and no noise from pumps or the DP system of vessels. “We have really gone out of our way to mitigate all of the negative feedback that the industry has received.”

Still, the pushback continues. A 2023

Planet Tracker report highlighted that, like crude oil, nodules take millions of years to form, so biodiversity loss would essentially be permanent. And in Feb- ruary 2024, the European Parliament passed a resolution raising concerns about Norway’s mining intentions.

www.marinetechnologynews.com 33

MTR #3 (18-33).indd 33 4/4/2024 9:17:27 AM