30 



gating more than 100 processes, Deepsea Ventures, Inc., reported in 

 the June issue of Ocean Industry magazine that it has developed a 

 chemical hydro-metallurgical process to extract economically manga- 

 nese, copper, cobalt, and nickel from seabed nodules. The expected 

 yield from full-scale processing will be 260,000 tons of manganese; 

 12,600 tons of nickel ; 10,000 tons of copper ; and 2,400 tons of cobalt. 

 , Such technological developments point up the fact that technology 

 is a product of incentive and time. It is within present knowledge to 

 acquire the desired technological capability to exploit the seabed 

 more fully, but the time factor and the speed of development are 

 dependent on the incentive to invest the required capital. This incen- 

 tive is a combination of economic, social, and political factors. 



PHOSPHORITE 



Phosphate rock on the seabed, to justify the operational costs of its 

 recovery, has to compete with present land deposits in purity and 

 grade of the ore body, abundance, cost of transportation, processing 

 and beneficiation, and cost of exploration at sea versus on land. 



Although most of the phosphate deposits on land are of marine 

 origin, their exposure to weathering processes through geologic time 

 results in an enriched final product with a higher content of phosphate 

 than the marine deposits, tjubmarine pellets and nodules seldom con- 

 tain more than 30 percent P2O5 whereas the cutoff grade for fertilizer 

 production is about 31.5 percent, and land deposits now being worked 

 contain around 35 per cent. 



World demand for phosphate products (industry 20 per cent, 

 fertilizer 80 per cent) has been increasing at an annual rate of 

 6" per cent; In 1965 world consumption totaled 63 million metric tons ; 

 in 1975 a minimum of 120 million tons would be needed, and in the 

 next decade the world demand is expected to double.^^ Earlier cal- 

 culations which show the expected increase in world population, and 

 the per capita consumption projected to the year 2000 A.D., are 

 shown in Tables VI-IX.^^ As indicated in Table VIII, by the year 

 2000, the total world consumption of phosphate rock is forecast to 

 reach 7.6 billion long tons, containing about 2.28 billion long tons of 

 phosphate, and total U.S consumption is forecast to reach 1.23 billion 

 long tons, containing about 380 million long tons of phosphate. The 

 world reserve and potential resources of phosphate rock and apatite 

 were reported by the U.S. Bureau of Mines to contain nearly 50 billion 

 long tons of phosphate.^^ This supply is believed more than adequate 

 for projected demands. Furthermore, new land deposits are being dis- 

 covered,*^ and new processing and more efficient beneficiation are 

 being applied in developing known reserves. 



^5 M. P. Overall. "Mining phosphorite from the sea. Part 2 : Economics of mining and 

 beneficiation." Ocean Industry (October 1968), page 60. 



*" Chester O. Ensign, Jr., "Economic barriers delay undersea mining." Mining Engineer- 

 ing (September 1966), page 60. 



•'■' Ibid., page 61. 



<8 A new discovery in Saudi Arabia was made by geologists of the U.S. Geological Survey 

 near the Jordanian border. The Turayf Area I covers 1,300 square miles and is estimated 

 to hold about 1.1 billion tons. Thaniyat Turayf Phosphate Area II covers 1,500 square 

 miles and contains almost 100 million tons of high-grade ore. (Charles R. Meissner, Jr., 

 U.S. Geological Survey). "Phosphate Deposits in Sirhan-Turayf Basin." In "Mineral Re- 

 sources Research 1967-8." (Directorate General of Mineral Resources, Saudi Arabia), 

 pages 52-3. 



