Numerical calculations of environmental impacts for deep sea mining activities.

With the expected dramatic increase of mineral resources consumption, deep sea mining (DSM) was proposed as a method supplying the running of world economy by cooperating with or compensating for the terrestrial mining industry. However, its industrialization process is hindered by various reasons including the technological feasibility, economic profitability, and the DSM environmental impacts. The objective of this paper is to calculate the DSM environmental impacts based on a DSM environmental impact framework, which was selected through a systematic literature review in earlier work.

A numerical calculation method of environmental impacts for the deep sea mining industry - a review.

Since the gradual decrease of mineral resources on-land, deep sea mining (DSM) is becoming an urgent and important emerging activity in the world. However, until now there has been no commercial scale DSM project in progress. Together with the reasons of technological feasibility and economic profitability, the environmental impact is one of the major parameters hindering its industrialization.