A European consortium has launched a new Horizon 2020 project: Blue Nodules.
The project addresses the challenge of creating a viable and sustainable value chain to retrieve polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor. It will develop and test new highly-automated and sustainable technologies for deepsea mining with minimal environmental pressures.
Technical and Operational Aspects
The technical side of the project is dedicated to subsea harvesting equipment in addition to the insitu seafloor and sea surface processing of polymetallic nodules. The operational aspect focuses on sea operations and logistics, including compliance with, and development of, rules and regulations, and the business case. The independent, dedicated environmental part will focus on environmental pressures and on an Environmental Impact Assessment.
In all areas, Blue Nodules will build on the results of the European FP7 projects, MIDAS and Blue Mining and the EcoMining pilot action funded by the JPI Oceans initiative of the European science foundations. Rodney Norman, Director at IHC Mining, which is coordinating the project, explains that Blue Nodules is significant because it allows the European consortium to expand technological development beyond the vertical transportation system of Blue Mining to the seafloor mining vehicle and other components of the system.
Kick off
On 9 and 10 February, the coordinator of the project, IHC Mining, part of Royal IHC in the Netherlands, will host the Blue Nodules kick-off meeting at its premises in Kinderdijk. Stakeholder expectations are taken into account by way of a stakeholder group and an advisory board. An independent ethics advisor will safeguard the ethics standards of the project.
Blue Nodules
Blue Nodules is a four-year EU-funded project that launches in February 2016 and is part of Horizon 2020’s Research and Innovation action. The project aims to develop "Breakthrough Solutions for the Sustainable Harvesting and Processing of Deep Sea Polymetallic Nodules" and is granted for the call SC5-11c-2015 "Deep mining on continent and/or in sea-bed".
The consortium consists of fourteen leading industry and research partners from nine European countries:
- Royal IHC – IHC Mining B.V. The Netherlands
- Dredging International Belgium
- Continental AG United Kingdom & Hungary
- IHC MTI The Netherlands
- De Regt Marine Cables The Netherlands
- Uniresearch The Netherlands
- Seascape Consultants Ltd. United Kingdom
- GSR Belgium
- Bureau Veritas France
- NIOZ The Netherlands
- RWTH Aachen Germany
- NTNU Norway
- Aarhus University Denmark
- UPC Spain
