National Maritime Research Institute of Japan (NMRI) has been developing the integrated design support tool, called “Harmonic Design Tool”, for evaluating economical / safe / environmental aspects of the offshore platform. We are also conducting the conceptual design of the offshore platforms for assessing the availability and accuracy of this design support tool. Seafloor massive sulphides (SMS) are high-grade hydrothermal deposits rich in copper, zinc and lead with a high gold and silver content. The Japanese Economic Exclusive Zone (EEZ) is well known to have high potential of SMS. Thus we decided the SMS mining as one of the most promising applications for the offshore platform technologies. Based on the published potential map of resources and the metocean database established in this project, we decided Izu-Bonin Arc as the target sea area and derived the design and operation conditions for the offshore mining platform. Then we proceeded to the basic concept such as the production rate and storage capacity, dynamic positioning system for station keeping and operation availability. This paper presents the review of the conceptual design of the offshore platform for SMS mining.
Comparison Function with Right Answer for Software Design Support Tool Perseus
