Techniques and results

Abstract

An area of about 300,000 sq km in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) was demarcated to estimate the abundance, grade and reserves of the nodules This area was further demarcated into two regions of 150,000 sq km each A 50 km grid sampling was carried out to narrow down the area for detailed exploration These studies were done to candidate mine sites in the area of high potential The database to record details was created in the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), India, Goa and Engineers India Ltd (EIL) and Metallurgical and Engineering Consultants (MECON) were involved in the database management R & D efforts in the extraction of metallurgy of the nodules was started by various leading research centres in the country Efforts to develop the existing technologies are made These include dredge development, photo-sledge development, geochronology laboratory, pore water studies, etc.