TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Canadian marine mining project developer Nautilus Minerals on Tuesday said a British engineering firm had successfully completed factory acceptance testing of the umbilical winches for three seafloor production tools (SPTs).
UK-based Soil Machine Dynamics designed and built the umbilical winches, based on standard oil and gas industry technology currently in use throughout the world in deep-water construction and related activities.
The umbilical cables that would be installed in the winches were designed and adapted for Nautilus’s use by German firm Norddeutsche Seekabelwerke.
“Completion of FAT on the umbilical winches marks another significant step in the journey towards seafloor mining in 2018. The winches are now ready for the installation of the umbilical cable,” Nautilus CEO Mike Johnston said.
He added that, once this task had been completed later this year, the winches would be dispatched to Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding, based in Fujian province, in south-eastern China, where the company’s charter vessel was being designed and built, for integration onto the vessel.
The prospective marine miner planned to mine copper and gold at the Solwara 1 seafloor project, offshore Papua New Guinea.
The Solwara 1 winches weigh about 85 t each and would be used to manage the feed-out and recovery of the SPT umbilicals. There was one winch per SPT. The winches store 2 500 m of armoured umbilical, with the umbilical providing the power and control systems to the SPTs through copper wire and fibre-optic cables embedded within the armoured casing.