Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) was the first to discover oxygen being produced in the deep water of the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean. The seafloor in this area contains large numbers of polymetallic nodules which have been targeted by deep-sea mining operations for harvesting.
Sweetman was measuring oxygen levels in the presence of biological activity. Normally the sensors would show a drop but instead oxygen levels increased. In two days of monitoring, the levels tripled. Sweetman thought his sensors were on the fritz and recalibrated them but the readings kept showing up.
That’s when he contacted Franz Geiger, a Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University who had previously written a paper that described how rust and saltwater when combined could produce electricity and split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen as a result.
Sweetman sent Geiger sample polymetallic nodules. In testing, he showed that they had natural geobattery characteristics. Individual nodules could generate up to 0.95 volts. A charge of 1.5 volts would induce electrolysis to separate water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. When Geiger grouped several nodules the voltage rose enough to produce seawater electrolysis which had never been observed before in the deep ocean.
Sweetman and Geiger published their discovery yesterday in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience. They describe where the oxygen was found and the rate of production coming from depths of over 4,000 metres (13,123 feet). In a Northwestern news release issued yesterday, Sweetman states, “For aerobic life to begin on the planet, there had to be oxygen, and our understanding has been that Earth’s oxygen supply began with photosynthetic organisms. But we now know that there is oxygen produced in the deep sea, where there is no light. I think we, therefore, need to revisit questions like: Where could aerobic life have begun?”
The risks associated with deep-sea mining go back to the first attempts in the 1980s. Marine biologists revisiting the sites in 2016 and 17 where these projects occurred have found dead zones that have lasted for decades.
The polymetallic nodules in question being rich in cobalt, nickel, copper, lithium and manganese, metals are tempting because there is high demand for their use in electric batteries. That’s why The Metals Company, a prospective deep-sea miner, has signed agreements with the island nations of Nauru, Kiribati and the Kingdom of Tonga, who own the commercial rights to develop the zone including mining the sea bed. In my visit to The Metals Company website today, no acknowledgement of the discovery of dark oxygen appears. No doubt the company will need to acknowledge this new information and reconsider its plans.
International concerns about deep-sea mining have been on the minds of many recently. The United Nations International Seabed Authority (ISA) held its annual meeting in June in Kingston, Jamaica, its headquarters. Deep-sea mining and seabed marine environment conservation were on the agenda. An alliance of over 100 organizations called the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC), has been lobbying the ISA and mining companies to agree to a deep-sea mining moratorium. The discovery of dark oxygen from seabed sources should strengthen their case. When Sofia Tsenilki, the DSCC’s Deep-Sea Mining Global Campaign Lead, learned of this discovery she stated it “provides further support…for a moratorium…It is human arrogance to continue to push to mine these nodules that are producing potential life-sustaining oxygen in an extraordinarily important and unique ecosystem.”
Even should The Metals Company or other deep-sea miners state they would be selective in nodule harvesting, the equipment these companies use produces sediment plumes while tracking across the seabed. Environmental impacts from the sediment could inhibit dark oxygen level production as the nodules get buried.
Lisa Levin, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography describes the implications of Sweetman and Geiger’s research stating, “There are still new processes to discover that challenge what we know about life in our ocean…in order to inform deep-ocean policy.”
]]>Climate Change Update: Carbon Capture Technology that May Actually Work
A California based company, Codexis, announced this week that a pilot project capturing CO2 from flue gas at a power plant in Alabama produced promising results. Using carbonic anhydrase, an enzyme-based carbon capture technology, the company recovered carbon equivalent to 1,800 trees daily. This was a 2-million times improvement over previous demonstrations and showed that enzyme-based carbon capture can trap up to 90% of CO2 emissions. In the United States coal-fired power plants contribute 37% of the CO2 pumped into the atmosphere.
Energy Update: A New Nuclear Reactor that Uses Nuclear Waste as Fuel
GE-Hitachi has proposed to build a next-generation nuclear fission reactor to supply power in the United Kingdom. Called PRISM, the reactor uses plutonium as fuel and liquid-sodium as coolant. Currently the UK stockpiles spent plutonium and depleted uranium fuel rods at nuclear waste facilities throughout the country. It has accumulated enough spent fuel to provide power for half a millennium should the PRISM reactor project move ahead. PRISM can use the spent plutonium and depleted uranium left over from existing reactors to generate 600 Megawatts of continuous clean energy with zero emissions. The designers hope to have PRISM in operation within five years.
Mining Update: China to Mine the Ocean Depths
Hard to know whether to classify this story under mining or inner space but China is about to make a major foray to the ocean floor in search of resources for its expanding economy. The plan is to build a submersible for seabed mining and underwater drilling. The submersible to be built by the China Ship Scientific Research Center will measure 60.2 meters (almost 200 feet), by 15.8 meters (50 feet) and rise 9.7 meters (30 feet) from the ocean floor. It will weigh 2,600 tons and will feature on board accommodation for 33 and multiple ports for docking other submersibles. The plan is to place the station at depths between 1,000 and 8,000 meters (3,300 to almost 5 miles) in depth. A prototype to handle a crew of 12 is to be built and submerged in 2015. The full-scale submersible is planned for 2030.
Robotics Update: Artificial Intelligence Applied to Sorting the Garbage
Containers Maes is a waste logistics operator in Belgium that is about to install its first artificial intelligence based robotic recycling system called the ZenRobotics Recycler, a creation of ZenRobotics Ltd., of Helsinki, Finland. The Recycler uses a wide range of sensors to identify valuable raw materials and remove them from the waste stream for reprocessing.The sensors are tied into the ZenRobotics Brain, a control technology that learns as it is exposed to more materials. The artificial intelligence uses an algorithm that mimics the functions of the human cerebellum allowing for rapid learning about the waste material that gets conveyed through the recycler. To make an even greener statement, Containers Maes is running its robotic system solely on solar power.
Transportation Update: Hypersonic Spaceplane in the Works
Recently we reported that Virgin Galactic has plans to offer sub-orbital commercial rocket flights connecting places like New York and Hong Kong in under an hour. But a new DARPA project under the banner “Integrated Hypersonics” is building a spaceplane that will use a combination of technologies to achieve speeds of Mach 20 (24,000 kilometers or 15,000 miles per hour) while remaining within the atmosphere for time-critical air transport. Called the Hypersonic X-plane or HS, the technology will use air-breathing reusable engines and land on runways. Prior to this project the fastest scramjet achieved Mach 8. For the HX to reach Mach 20 it will use expendable rockets in addition to scramjets. A prototype is planned for launch in 2016.
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