This Week in Deep-sea Mining: May 31, 2022

Headlines The Week: All you need to know about Varaha-1, a seabed mining machine India is developing Reuters: G7 countries say strict environmental rules needed for deep-sea mining Eco-Business: Credit Suisse joins growing list of banks shunning deep-sea mining Mining Dot Com: The Metals Company deep-water tests polymetallic nodule collector vehicle in Atlantic Daily Beast: […]

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Solid state batteries could change the seascape for deep-sea mining

In 1980, Dr. John B. Goodenough unraveled the electro-chemical reactions that would give birth to one of the single most important inventions of the 20th century: the lithium ion battery. The first commercially viable rechargeable lithium ion batteries were soon being produced by Dr. Akira Yoshino at Sony. Without these tiny cells’ immense potential to […]

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Cut rock samples from the Rio Grande Rise show Fe-Mn crusts (black and gray) growing on various types of iron-rich substrate rocks (pale to dark brown). Photo credit: Kira Mizell, USGS.

A lost continent rich in cobalt crusts could create a challenging precedent for mineral extraction in the high seas.

The Rio Grande Rise is an almost completely unstudied, geologically intriguing, ecologically mysterious, potential lost continent in the deep south Atlantic. And it also hosts dense cobalt-rich crusts. The Rio Grande Rise is a region of deep-ocean seamounts roughly the area of Iceland in the southwestern Atlantic. It lies west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge off […]

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The Ocean No 6 returns to port in South China's Guangdong province on Nov 11, 2018. Photo courtesy Chinanews.com.

Chinese vessel collects cobalt samples in the Pacific.

Reuters | 11 November 2018 A Chinese deep-sea exploration vessel has returned to port in Guangdong after collecting samples of so-called cobalt-bearing crusts during a 138-day survey in the west Pacific, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday. Cobalt is used in batteries for electric vehicles, an important industry for China, the world’s largest […]

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How Batteries Sparked a Cobalt Frenzy and What Could Happen Next

MARK BURTON on BLOOMBERG MARKETS | 17 December 2017 “Cobalt left other metals in the dust this year, driven by demand from electric carmakers like Tesla Inc. But with new supply coming online and high prices likely to spur substitution and recycling, the market for the key battery component could prove choppier next year.” Read […]

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electric cars

‘Miner’s revenge’ is coming with electric cars, Friedland says

BLOOMBERG via MINING WEEKLY | 1 Dec 2017 “Surging demand for metals like copper, nickel and cobalt for use in electric vehicles promises to overturn the balance of power between mining companies and their customers, according to billionaire investor Robert Friedland. Automakers will have to change the way they approach procurement if they want to […]

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