Blue Mining
Resource Discovery
Maria S Merian
The German Research vessel Maria S Merian
Deployment
Ship-based bathymetry
OceanflORE crawler
An example of the OceanflORE crawler on the seabed
AUV ABYSS
The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) ABYSS is of the REMUS 6000 type
The Blue Mining consortium partners

Blue Mining: breakthrough solutions for sustainable deep sea mining

An international European consortium of 19 large industry and research organisations on various maritime fields of expertise, the “Blue Mining” consortium, will develop solutions that will bring sustainable deep sea mining a big step closer. In a duration of 48 months the “Blue Mining” project will address all aspects of the value chain in this field, from resource discovery to resource assessment and from exploitation technologies to the legal and regulatory framework. The project “Breakthrough Solutions for Mineral Extraction and Processing in Extreme Environment – Blue Mining” received funding from the European Commission.

The extreme conditions found on the deep-ocean floor raise specific challenges, both technically and environmentally, which are demanding and entirely different from land-based mining. Today, European offshore industries and marine research institutions have some global advantage through their significant experience and technology and are well positioned to develop engineering and knowledge-based solutions to resource exploitation in these challenging and sensitive environments.

Final Report of BLUE MINING

Final Report of BLUE MINING

The consortium proudly presents the final report.
Click on the image to download the report.

10-10-2017: FINAL Workshop in Aachen!

With the end of the Blue Mining project in sight, it is our pleasure to present findings and results to the public.

Interested? Visit the Workshop page for more information and registration.

Nodules

Explanation of Mn Nodules by RWTH - Mirjam Rahn M.Sc.

Blog of research 1 – cruise M127

Blog of research 1 – cruise M127

Click on the picture to go to the Blog of the first research cruise of Blue Mining project, M127 with the MS Meteor

Blog of Equipment tests cruise

Blog of Equipment tests cruise

Click the picture if you want to follow the blog on the tests during this cruise

The Blue Mining team

GA01 - Kinderdijk
GA02 - Aachen
GA03 - Lisbon

Partners about

Graham NicholsonGraham Nicholson
“Blue Mining shall take a unique look at all aspects of deepwater mining, not only addressing the question of technical feasibility, but also answering questions regarding economics and sustainability”
Uniresearch is the project manager of the Blue Mining FP7 project.
Testimonial1Testimonial1
Seventy percent of the earth’s surface is covered by sea and oceans, yet we seem to know less about our ocean space than outer space read more..

Project interactions

The Blue Mining project will interact with other initiatives, current and past research projects. These are EC funded initiatives, like FP7 MIDAS (The MIDAS project addresses fundamental environmental issues relating to the exploitation of deep-sea mineral and energy resources) and ERA-MIN (Era-Min – Network on the Industrial Handling of Raw Materials for European Industries ERA-MIN is an ERA-NET program). Next to this the Blue Mining project will interact with the EC Study: "Study to investigate state of knowledge of Deep Sea Mining".

Read more...