JPH0226039B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention enables economical and safe rock crushing of metal sulfide ore deposits, which are important mineral resources, accumulated on the ocean floor, to collect the ore, and to efficiently lift the ore to a marine mother ship. The present invention relates to a mining method and equipment used therein.

In recent years, several promising metal sulfide deposits have been discovered from the East Pacific Galabalos Ridge to the Mendocino Fracture Zone. This metal sulfide deposit is located on the ocean floor.
The seabed is 2000 to 4000m shallower than manganese nodules, which are widely distributed and deposited on the seafloor at 5000 to 6000m.
It is thought that the metal sulfides contained in the hot water ejected from a chimney-shaped vent into a fault zone where cracks in the ocean floor structure spread at a relatively fast rate were cooled by seawater and solidified. It is called a "hydrothermal deposit" because of its formation process. These types of hydrothermal deposits are piled up in a chimney-like or pillow-like shape, and the discovered examples are 200 to 300 mm wide.
It is a promising ore deposit with an estimated metal content of 25 million tons. In addition, considering the seabed geological structure, it is estimated that similar promising metal sulfide ore deposits are deposited on the seabed around the Japanese archipelago.

Western countries that have discovered promising ore deposits in the ridges and fracture zones of the East Pacific Ocean are said to be conducting intensive research in search of economically viable technology, as the technology to mine them has not yet been developed. There is.

Although they are called seabed mineral resources, there are major differences in the deposition conditions between seafloor metal sulfides and manganese nodules, and there are correspondingly large differences in mining techniques. Manganese nodules are distributed flatly on the seabed surface at a depth of 4,000 to 6,000 m, whereas metal sulfides are raised in chimney-like or pillow-like shapes at specific locations on the shallow seabed at a depth of 2,000 to 4,000 m. Forms ore deposits. Therefore, it is generally thought that metal sulfide ore deposits can be mined more easily, but in reality, from a technical point of view, there are difficult technical problems that must be solved for other reasons.

In the case of manganese nodules, although the mining water depth is deep, they are distributed flatly along the surface layer of unconsolidated sediment (pillow mud), and the grain size is mainly lumps with a size of about 2 to 8 cm. , its apparent specific gravity is about 2 to 2.3.
To collect the ore, it is necessary to lift the nodule along with seawater and silt to a mining ship at sea using a suction device. On the other hand, the metal sulfide seabed deposits (seafloor hydrothermal deposits) that are the mining target of the present invention are ejected and deposited on the seabed surface in a limited range as described above, and are several tens of meters thick. It is formed as a naturally concentrated ore that rises up like a chimney or a pillow, and its high metal content has an apparent specific gravity of about 5, making it as hard as lava. are doing. Because of this state of accumulation, it is completely impossible to mine using equipment that directly sucks and collects manganese nodules. Possible mining methods are to explode the seabed ore deposit, collect it, and salvage it, or drill a hole with a rock drill, collect the ore that has been dug up, and then lift the ore. There is no other choice but to use However, no matter which mining method, blasting or rock drilling, is used to break down ore deposits, the shape and grain size of the ore blocks vary widely;
Most of the ore is not suitable for suction collection, and if the ore is collected forcibly, suction pipes, pumps, etc. will become clogged, which is dangerous. Also,
Even if the ore in this state were collected and lifted using an underwater shovel vehicle, it would not be economically viable in terms of the energy required and the amount of mined. In addition, it takes time and is uneconomical to collect all the ore lumps scattered by blasting and rock drilling.

In order to solve these economic and technical problems, it is necessary to carry out an integrated operation in which rock is collected at the site of the seabed deposit at the same time as rock drilling, crushed to a predetermined particle size or less, and then sucked and collected. It is now possible to safely lift ore, and it is thought that it will be possible to economically mine metal sulfide lumps from hydrothermal ore deposits, which was previously considered extremely difficult. The inventor of the present invention has focused on this, and as a result of research, has finally invented an economical mining method and apparatus that can mine metal sulfide ore deposits by crushing them together with crushed rock into a shape suitable for suction collection.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be explained in detail based on the drawings.
Figures 1 and 2 show a mining vehicle 1 that can freely run on the seabed.
The schematic configuration is shown below. This mining vehicle 1 is suspended from a marine mother ship by a wire 2 or the like, receives power from the sea via a cable 3, and is capable of self-propelled by an endless track 4. A base 5 of the mining vehicle 1 is mounted on a rotating shaft 7 on a truck 6 and is supported so as to be freely rotatable in a horizontal plane. The base 5 is provided with a suction pump 10, a suction pump drive motor 11, a high pressure discharge pump 12, and a high pressure pump drive motor 13. Further, an arm 16 is attached to the base 5, which protrudes long from the fulcrum 14 and moves up and down by an operating piston 15, and a mining section 17 is provided at the tip of the arm 16. In this way, the metal sulfides in the submarine hydrothermal ore deposit 18 that has risen and accumulated on the ocean floor are mined.

Details of the mining section will be described later, but before that, we will briefly describe the operation of the entire device. The discharge pressure water generated by driving the high pressure discharge pump 12 provided on the base 5 passes through the high pressure water pipe 20 and drives the water pressure motor of the mining section 17, which is attached to its rotating shaft. A rotary drum is rotated at low speed under high pressure to generate hydrothermal ore deposits on the ocean floor 1.
8 and the rotating drum, the rock is broken into large pieces by the force of the rock crushing blades provided on the outer periphery of the rotating drum, and then sent to the crushing plate, where it is further crushed into crushed pieces of a predetermined size or less. be.
At the same time, a negative pressure is generated by driving the suction pump 10, the seawater in the suction conduit 21 is sucked into the suction pump side, a high flow rate is generated, and a strong suction force is applied to the mining section 17 connected to this suction conduit 21, and the above-mentioned The crushed ore blocks crushed by the crushing section are sucked together with seawater. This sucked crushed mass is sucked into the suction pump 10 through the suction conduit 21, and
With a lifting force of 0, the ore is sent through the ore lifting pipe 22 to the mother ship or the next ore lifting device.

Figure 1 shows a state in which the mining vehicle 1 is positioned perpendicular to the seabed ore deposit 18, and the ore deposit is crushed and collected while moving the mining section 17 vertically and horizontally. 1 is located in parallel and progresses horizontally in the middle of the ore deposit, crushing rock and collecting ore. As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, a flexible high-pressure hose 23 or a flexible joint is connected to the connection between the suction pump 10 and the suction conduit 21 and the connection between the high-pressure discharge pump 12 and the high-pressure water pipe 20. The vertical movement of the arm 16 used to support the mining section 17 is not obstructed. Note that a pump that discharges high-speed flow is used instead of the suction pump, and its jet nozzle is inserted into the suction conduit 21 to increase the flow velocity.
A suction negative pressure may be generated. An embodiment of the mining section 17 is shown in FIGS. 3 and 4. As described above, the mining section 17 is attached to the tip of the arm 16, is surrounded by a strong wall, and is designed to have sufficient mechanical strength. The mining section 17 includes a rotating drum 31 having a large number of rock crushing blades 30 on its outer circumferential surface, and a crushing plate 33 located so as to partially cover the circumferential surface of the rotating drum 31 and having a large number of crushing ports 32 opened therein. A space constituting the mining section 34 is structured to communicate with the suction conduit 21. The mining section 17 is provided with a high-pressure water inlet 35 through which the end of the high-pressure water pipe 20 opens, and the high-pressure water supplied through this inlet drives the water-pressure motor 36 and the bearing bracket 3
Rotate the rotating shaft 38 supported by 7. Since the above-mentioned rotating drum 31 is attached to this rotating shaft 38, the rotating drum 31 equipped with the rock crushing blades 30 is moved in the direction of the arrow by the high pressure water at a very low circumferential speed capable of crushing rock and with a strong push. It will rotate under pressure. The mining section 17 itself has a considerable weight and is firmly supported by the arm 16 and the very heavy mining vehicle 1, so a powerful rotational torque is applied to the ore deposit and crushes it. be. This allows the ore deposit to be broken into relatively large rock blocks. In other words, metal sulfides in submarine hydrothermal deposits are as hard as lava, brittle, and easily broken, so this property can be skillfully used to crush them. This is completely different from rock drilling. If the ore deposits are shallowly drilled using high-speed rotation, it is possible to cut fine ore blocks, but this method causes severe wear on the drilling blades, making it impossible to polish the blades or replace the rotating drum at deep seabeds. As a result, the amount of mined minerals will decrease, making it economically unviable.

For this reason, the present invention reduces the number of rock crushing blades 30 of the rotating drum 31 to a certain extent, slows down the rotation speed thereof, and increases rock crushing pressure per rock crushing blade 30.

As a result, the rock crushing pressure and depth of the submarine hydrothermal ore deposit 18 can be increased, and the rock crushing blade 30 can be mined by crushing relatively large chunks of crushed rock with little wear, so that the amount of crushed rock is smaller than the amount of cutting described above. It will increase dramatically. However, the shape of this crushed rock mass is large, and if the ore is collected as it is by suction and lifted to the offshore mother ship, the suction flow velocity and lifting flow velocity in the suction pipe must be approximately doubled, resulting in a large energy loss. It is. In addition, the large and irregular shapes of the crushed rock blocks cause dangerous problems such as blockages in pipes.

Therefore, in mining seafloor hydrothermal deposits, which is the object of the present invention, the present invention provides a method and method that can solve the above problems by further crushing crushed rock blocks into crushed blocks of a predetermined size or less. It is a device.

A crushed rock block that has been rotated and crushed by the rock crushing blade 30 is sent into the vicinity of the crushing plate 33 that covers the rotary drum 31 in an arc shape in the mining section 17, and the crushing plate 33 that is fixed is crushed by the rotating pressing force of the rock crushing blade 30. It is crushed through the opening 32 to form crushed pieces of a predetermined size or less. This crushed mass is sucked and collected together with seawater into a suction collecting section 34 which is located outside of the crushing port 32 and has a crescent-shaped envelope structure and has a suction port 40 . This suction negative pressure is generated by the suction pump 10 of the mining vehicle 1 via the suction conduit 21 connected to the suction collecting section 34, and produces a suction flow in the direction of the arrow. As a result, the crushed lumps in the crushing section of the mining section 17 are once sucked together with seawater into the suction ore collecting section 34, and then stably sucked into the suction pump 10 through the suction conduit 21, and safely passed through the ore lifting pipe 22. The ore is then lifted from the next ore lifting device to the offshore mother ship.

FIG. 5 shows another embodiment of the mining section. Arc-shaped crushing parts 51 are provided on both sides of the suction collecting part 50.
Rotating drums 52a and 52b are provided on both sides and rotate along the arc shape of the rotating drums 52a and 51b.
2a and 52b are rotated to crush the submarine hydrothermal ore deposit. Large ore blocks crushed by this are sent to the crushing sections on both sides. Then, the rock is crushed on both sides by the crushing ports 54 of the fixed crushing plates 53a, 53b and the rotating pressing force of the rock crushing blade 55.

The crushed lumps are sucked together with seawater into the suction ore collecting section 50 through the suction port 56 connected to the crushing port 54 and collected therein.

The feature of this embodiment is that the submarine hydrothermal ore deposit is rotated and fed using rotating drums on both sides so that the ore blocks crushed in each rock crushing section are rolled up into each crushing section, so that the amount of crushed ore blocks that are left behind on the seabed is reduced. It is extremely economical as most of it can be mined.

The present invention is a method and apparatus for mining submarine hydrothermal ore deposits configured as described above, so that an integrated operation of crushing rock to a predetermined particle size or less and sucking ore collection can be performed at the site of a submarine ore deposit. It has become possible to lift ore safely, and metal sulfide lumps from hydrothermal ore deposits, which had previously been considered extremely difficult, can be economically mined, and the effects are extremely large.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a mining state using the apparatus according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of another mining state, and FIG. 3 is a plan sectional view showing an embodiment of the mining section. FIG. 4 is a front sectional view thereof, and FIG. 5 is a front sectional view showing another embodiment of the mining section. 1... Mining vehicle, 5... Base, 10... Suction pump, 12... High pressure discharge pump, 16... Arm,
17...Mining Department, 18...Seafloor hydrothermal deposit, 30...
...Rock crushing blade, 31...Rotating drum, 32...Crushing port, 33...Crushing plate, 34...Ore collecting section.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A rotary drum equipped with a large number of rock crushing blades on the outer circumferential surface is rotated at a low circumferential speed to roughly divide a hard and brittle submarine hydrothermal ore deposit into crushed rock blocks, and the crushed rock blocks are then rotated. Using the rotation of the rock crushing blade protruding from the drum, the rock is rotated and fed between the rock crushing plate having a crushing opening, and the pressure of the rotating rock crushing blade crushes the rock into small pieces that can be sucked into the crushing plate. A method of mining from submarine hydrothermal ore deposits, which is characterized by sucking up small lumps that have passed through the seawater along with seawater and sending them out to sea. 2. A base that operates by receiving power from the sea and is movable on the seabed, a suction device and a high-pressure discharge pump installed on the base, and an arm extending from the base;
and a mining section attached to the tip of the arm,
The mining section includes a rotating drum that has a large number of rock crushing blades on its outer peripheral surface and rotates at a low speed driven by high pressure water from the high pressure discharge pump to crush submarine hydrothermal ore deposits;
The rotating drum has an ore collecting section having a crushing plate located so as to cover a part of the circumferential surface of the rotating drum and having a large number of crushing ports, and a suction conduit communicating with the ore collecting section and the suction device. A mining device for submarine hydrothermal ore deposits that is characterized by breaking large chunks of crushed rock into small pieces using a crushing plate, and sucking and transporting the small pieces together with seawater.