Rapid Reconnaissance Sampling of Hard Mineral Deposits on the Seabed

海底硬矿床快速勘察采样

• 批准号: 8917518
• 负责人: Michael Cruickshank
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: University of Hawaii
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1990
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1990-04-01 至 1992-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=8917518&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Rapid; Reconnaissance; Sampling; Hard; Mineral

The resource potential of deep-water marine minerals has been brought into focus with the establishment of 200-mile offshore Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) by the world's coastal and island nations. A variety of programs is currently underway in the United States and several other nations for evaluating the potential deep seabed mineral resources that exist within national jurisdictions. Collection of outcrop samples from consolidated seabed mineral deposits is essential for deposit characterization but is a tedious and inaccurate process with presently available technology. Dredging, which is still the only common method, is notoriously imprecise and biased toward collection of protruding and loose rocks rather than representative in-place material. The project proposed here has the potential to replace dredging for reconnaissance surveys of hard seabed mineral deposits with a precise, rapid and unbiased method based upon an untethered free-fall sampler.

随着世界沿海和岛国建立了200英里的近海专属经济区，深水海洋矿物的资源潜力得到了关注。美国和其他几个国家目前正在开展各种方案，以评估国家管辖范围内潜在的深海海底矿产资源。从合并的海底矿藏中收集露头样品对于确定矿床特征是必不可少的，但以目前可用的技术来说，这是一个繁琐和不准确的过程。挖泥仍然是唯一常见的方法，众所周知，这种方法不精确，而且偏向于收集突出和松散的岩石，而不是具有代表性的就地材料。这里提出的项目有可能用一种基于自由落体采样器的精确、快速和公正的方法取代对硬海底矿藏进行勘察的疏浚。