Nature's batteries at the bottom of the ocean! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 12:15:26 am
content: I was always suspicious of removing those nodules. We need to look into space for more metal, not the sea floor lol. There were plans to harvest them, and it looks like you could mess the eco system up from bottom to top if you remove those

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 12:19:03 am
content: Quotewhen ever has that stopped the search for profit?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 01:04:37 am
content: And they'll claim that we'll save the planet by ruining it.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 11:58:46 am
content: My first thought when I first saw this story (the BBC covered it a couple of weeks ago) was 'how have these things not corroded to nothing through electrolytic action in the Millions of years since they were formed?'. I've no doubt that it's (probably) true - it's fairly easily provable one way or the other anyway. [Edit: I'm sure the mining companies will be falling over themselves to prove otherwise!]Maybe these are the remnants and they started out as big as houses!

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 12:02:19 pm
content: Quote from: Gyro on July 30, 2024, 11:58:46 amAnything that has been going on for quite a while is clearly operating in a cycle. They just haven't yet figured out all the elements of that cycle.

author: MT
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 12:52:34 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on July 30, 2024, 01:04:37 amBingo!

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2024, 09:03:28 pm
content: This one was good too, DMM6500 at 9:14

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2024, 07:56:11 am
content: I wonder how long it will take until another spin of this discovery is popping up...Important: That is *not* my actual opinion, i am playing the devils advocate here!What if if this is fake, and just used by environmental nutters to block the mining of the sea?

author: dave j
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2024, 10:48:12 am
content: Quote from: Ranayna on July 31, 2024, 07:56:11 amThe fact that the research was funded by a deep sea mining company (i.e. the very people with the most to lose from this discovery) strongly implies that it's not fake.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2024, 11:21:49 am
content: Don't get me wrong. I do not think this is fake. Or rather, i do not have enough knowledge to make a real decision whether it is fake or not and my inner optimist tends to say "not fake".What i was saying is that i would not be surprised if some company that has a vested interest in deep sea mining might try to claim it as fake or inconclusive.But i did not know that the research was actually funded by such a company. That, weird as it may sound, adds credibility in my opinion.

author: Phil1977
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2024, 11:50:30 am
content: What I really miss in these discussions is any order of magnitude about how much of these nodules are to be harvested.Is it 1ppm, 1ppb, 1%, or what are we talking about in a worst-case, full scale sea floor exploration to equip every human being with the battery of a Porsche Taycan?Don't get me wrong, "playing" with the deep see ecosystem of course falls into the same category as geo-engineering or nuclear power - consequences of all of this can easily get out of hands.But anyhow, how does it compare to e.g. natural events in the deep sea like volcanic activity? Can the previously mentioned worst case be worse than anything that naturally happens?

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2024, 09:39:19 pm
content: Quote from: dave j on July 31, 2024, 10:48:12 amMining company is disputing the research.Quote from: Phil1977 on July 31, 2024, 11:50:30 amToday it would be insignificant, tomorrow who knows.Look at sand, we have tons of that right? Shouldn't cause a problem to mine it, but it has an effect now:https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-hidden-environmental-toll-of-mining-the-worlds-sandhttps://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/totally-unsustainable-sand-mining-harms-marine-environments-new-data-suggest/

author: Phil1977
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2024, 05:29:56 am
content: Quote from: thm_w on July 31, 2024, 09:39:19 pmI agree, today it would be insignificant. Because of tomorrow I wrote "scale it up until every human being has an EV-battery made with these nodules - as a worst case scenario".Again, I really don't want to promote environmental destruction. But everything that humanity does is toxic for something else, and to discuss toxicity you really need to talk about doses.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2024, 06:49:25 am
content: Quote from: Gyro on July 30, 2024, 11:58:46 amThey seem to be layered growths, not fragments or concretions (aside from what seabed gets trapped in the bottom resting side).The concentrations of Fe, Mn, etc. are extremely small in seawater. The (2+) ions are more soluble than others, but are easily oxidized; pure manganese deposits are usually present in Mn(4+) form (pyrolusite, etc.), and iron, mixed (2+, 3+) (magnetite) or (3+) (hematite). Evidently, these ions are at a low enough concentration not to spontaneously nucleate (that's happened long ago, at river deltas, deep sea smokers, etc.), and keep in mind, these things have been herefor millions of years, and likely will continue to (give or take areas where new spontaneous conditions form, or old fields get buried, subducted, etc.); these areextremely slowequilibria we're talking about!Note that these mixed oxides are moderately good conductors (they're used for battery and electrolysis electrodes), and given the layered composition (varying with global nutrient conditions, weather patterns, etc.), it could well be that cells are randomly created with enough potential to (endothermically) electrolyze water; or there are spontaneous or bacterial processes at work that liberate oxygen from the more oxidized ions (Mn(3+) is about as stable (bixbyite, though I gather it doesn't form at these temperatures, another more hydrated mineral would likely form?). In any case, there is some potential energy stored in these, despite the extremely slow deposition suggesting a low-energy process. I suppose one way to put it is: it might be low energy, but storing up that tiny margin over millions of years, can eventually count for something.It could very well be that these nodules imply something about an overall balance of redox potential on the planet; they almost certainly wouldn't form without a surplus of oxygen, but so too their growth might not be straightforward, perhaps stalling or even dissolving as conditions change -- particularly over glacial cycles, perhaps, but also broader cycles or trends, such as mass volcanic eruptions, or astronomical changes. It might be that their existence is something of an accident, a balance that merely happens to trend upward at the present time (and in just those locations where they do).They are present in the geologic record, so it's not like we live in unique times; but oxygen has been present for quite a long time, and, as long as the continents have been moving around, there have been vast swaths of otherwise stationary seabed, hardly accumulating insoluble matter, while the thermohaline cycle starts, stops and shifts paths -- bringing in trace elements, or stagnating in place.Tim

author: Phil1977
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2024, 07:06:35 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on August 01, 2024, 06:49:25 amThanks! That´s exactly what was on my mind, but well written. The seafloor is changing as the composition of the atmosphere is changing. In case of the atmosphere humanity has infamously proven it can contribute so much to the changes that it catastrophically accelerates. Is there any chance to mine enough nodules to do the same for the seafloor?Of course that´s a question for a scientific congress or similar.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2024, 09:41:54 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on July 30, 2024, 12:15:26 amThe next step for the mankind in its expansion is the sea floor, not the outer space.Expansion into the outer space will come when the mankind discovers and learns to use new sources of energy, and it will be a long way to go, imho.Thus the ecosystem of the oceans has to prepare itself on the invasive species coming from the continents pretty soon - in a couple of centuries from now..

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2024, 12:24:02 pm
content: "mining" in space makes not real sense except maybe for the most expesive materials (e.g. Pt, Pd Ir from some astoroids) and even than the energy needed may still make it too expensive.There is plenty of space in the deep see. So using a small part of this may not be that bad. A problem with the current plans is however that for mining a few of those nodules they stirr up quite some sediment and effect (devastate) a much larger area than actually mined. The measured voltage looks like a red hering and the way they showed the measurement with the metallic probes in the water gives little confidence.There are chemical changes, that could cause the release of oxigen, e.g. the tranformation of oxides to corbonates with increasing CO2 levels.This would be more transient, not a long term source to make it significant on the long term / large scale.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2024, 12:30:09 pm
content: Quote from: Kleinstein on August 01, 2024, 12:24:02 pmThat depends where stuff is, and where you want to use it. Mining in space seems like a great dodge of gravity wells, if you are looking to build large structures in orbit.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2024, 08:27:44 pm
content: Quote from: iMo on August 01, 2024, 09:41:54 amThat's not going to be easy. The most differential pressure a spacecraft has to cope with is 1 bar, less in practice, and that with the skin in tension. 1 bar (in compression too) isn't going to get you far off the beach! There's a reason why we know more about space than the ocean depths.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2024, 11:00:03 pm
content: I want that cheap iridium. Maybe it will be IrO2 already, then you can bake resistors up there and shoot them down to big net orbiting the earthMaybe they can make a big gattling gun type thing that shoots a constant stream of components to earth that we can catch and bring down. Like turn the asteroid into E192 series of resistors from 0201 to 10 watt through hole.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2024, 01:36:10 pm
content: Well, not quite. But even just some rudimentary fabrication possibilities exist.Not sure offhand how exactly you'd go about separating elements from a glass. One of the worst (from a terrestrial perspective!) ideas floated is, heat up e.g. lunar regolith in a huge solar furnace, and capture the Mg vapor that comes off, among others. Wild, but when your machinery is exponentially more expensive than your energy source, you don't exactly mind a little inefficiency.I had the thought of strapping an induction heater to a metallic asteroid, and melting a puddle into it; not sure what you'd do to skim off slag (maybe some ceramic stir rods or plates? centrifugation?), but whatever the case, you could dip a rod into the middle and, with careful adjustment of temperature, continuous-cast a rod out of the melt. Over time, the coil/head thing sinks down into a pit, and the rod is spooled up for storage. Or, maybe just left sticking out into space, not like we don't have some room to work with, and pieces get chopped off once in a while and piled up in a hopper, while the far ends dangle in the (solar) wind. Such rod stock could be used directly for fabricating trusses, or drawn or rolled into finer wire or sheet. (Mechanical working has the advantage of cracking loose any slag that's stuck onto it, though such debris needs to be carefully controlled to avoid it mucking up the mechanics, getting ground into abrasives in the bearings, etc.) It can also be remelted in a sliding-melt-zone (zone refining) process, to concentrate impurities to one end, allowing separation of nickel from iron, and well, everything else, from the somewhat-homogeneous puddle it started from. After enough passes, this affords concentration of PGMs, which could be packed inside a cheap pure-iron shell and deorbited down to Earth as an artificial meteor; with careful pitch, it can land in a designated area, say a desert, and a mining team sent to recover it. AFAIK, PGMs are largely dissolved in the iron phase, which is also partly why they're such low concentration in the crust, but relatively abundant in asteroids. Further separation, I don't know, you'd probably have to do a chemical process -- good luck handling and recycling mixed nitric and hydrochloric acids in space! Perhaps an electroplating process would do, perhaps in molten salt or glass to avoid the nasty aqueous solutions you'd need to work with PGMs otherwise (not to mention water itself being a prized volatile in space).Tim