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.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
American Concrete Institute (1990) Manual of concrete practice. ACI, Detroit
Bai Z, Wen Z, Wiltshire JC (2008) Marine mineral tailings use in anticorrosive coatings. In: Proceedings of the OCEANS 2008 MTS/IEEE QUEBEC conference, QC, Canada, 15–18 Sept 2008
Bai Z, Wen Z, Wiltshire JC (2016) Anticorrosive coatings prepared using the tailings of cobalt-rich manganese crusts: preparation and properties. Mar Georesour Geotechnol (in press)
El Swaify S, Chromec W (1985) The agricultural potential of manganese nodule waste material. In: Humphrey P (ed) Marine mining: a new beginning. Department of Planning and Economic Development, State of Hawaii, Honolulu, pp 208–227
Epstein E (1972) Mineral nutrition of plants: principles and perspectives. Wiley, New York
Haynes B, Barron D, Kramer G, Maeda R, Magyar M (1985) Laboratory processing and characterization of waste materials from manganese nodules. Bureau of Mines Report of Investigations, RI, p 893
Hue N, Silva J, Uehara G, Hamasaki R, Uchida R, Bunn P (1998) Managing manganese toxicity in former sugarcane soils on Oahu. Soil and Crop Management Reports, SCM-1, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, p 7
Jacobs M (2015) Tailings: effective stewardship. Mining, Nov 2015, pp 50–51
Kosmatka S, Parnesse W (1988) Design and control of concrete mixtures. Portland Cement Association, Skokie, IL
Lay GF, Wiltshire J (1997) Formulation of specialty glasses and glazes employing marine mineral tailings. In: Recent advances in marine science and technology’96, Pacon International, Honolulu, pp 347–361
Lay GF, Rockwell MC, Wiltshire JC (2009) Investigation of the properties of a borosilicate glass from recycled manganese crust tailings. J Charact Dev Novel Mater 1(3):225–240
Loudat T, Wiltshire J, Zaiger K, Allen J, Hirt W (1994) An economic analysis of the feasibility of manganese crust mining and processing. State of Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism Technical Report, p 105
Loudat T, Zaiger K, Wiltshire J (1995) Solution mining of johnston island manganese crusts: an economic evaluation. In: Proceedings of the Oceans’95 conference, Marine Technology Society, Washington, p 10
Mining Engineering (2015) Editorial: vatican hosts mining executives. Mining Engineering, Nov 2015, pp 12–20
Muslow S (2015) Update on the status of deep sea mining beyond national jurisdictions. J Ocean Technol 10(1):1–12
Troy PJ, Wiltshire J (1998) Manganese tailings: useful properties suggest a potential for gas absorbent and ceramic materials. Mar Georesour Geotechnol 16:273–281
Verlaan P, Wiltshire J (2000) Manganese tailings—a potential resource? Min Environ Manage 8(4):21–22
Wild A (1993) Soils and the environment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 287
Williams M (2015) Tailings: differentiating between ‘alarm ‘and ‘harm’. Mining, Nov 2015, pp 46–49
Wiltshire J (1993) Beneficial uses of ferromanganese marine mineral tailings. In: Saxena N (ed) Recent advances in marine science and technology, PACON International, Hawaii, pp 405–412
Wiltshire J (1997a) Use of marine mineral tailings for aggregate and agricultural applications. In: Proceedings of the international offshore and polar engineering conference, 25–30 May, Honolulu, Hawaii, ISOPE, Golden, CO, pp 468–474
Wiltshire J (1997b) The use of marine manganese tailings in industrial coatings applications. In: Proceedings of oceans 97, Marine Technology Society, Washington, DC, pp 1314–1319
Wiltshire J (2000) Innovations in marine ferromanganese oxide tailings disposal. In: Cronan D (ed) Handbook of marine mineral deposits. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, pp 281–305
Wiltshire J (2001) Future prospects for the marine minerals industry. Underwater, May/June 2001, pp 40–44
Wiltshire J, Loudat T (1998) The economic value of manganese tailings to marine mining development. In: Proceedings of the offshore technology conference, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Houston, pp 735–742
Wiltshire J, Loudat T (1999) The uses of fine grained manganese as an industrial filler. In: Saxena N (ed) Recent advances in marine science and technology, vol 98. Pacon International, Honolulu, pp 279–289
Wiltshire J, Moore K (2000) Manganese tailings concrete: antibiofouling properties and manganese toxicity. In: PACON’99 proceedings, Pacon International, Honolulu, pp 400–409
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wiltshire, J.C. (2017). Sustainable Development and Its Application to Mine Tailings of Deep Sea Minerals. In: Sharma, R. (eds) Deep-Sea Mining. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52557-0_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52557-0_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52556-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52557-0
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)