Effect of the environment on processing and handling materials at sea

Compared with conventional land-based mining and processing operations, the exploitation of minerals from the seabed, particularly in deep water, involves a vast range of new problems in conducting the various stages of mining, transportation, processing and disposal of waste products, in a marine environment. In all such operations the ways in which local sea and weather conditions and their seasonal variations affect the stability of the vehicle, be it ship or other floating structure or submersible from which the operations are being conducted, have to be taken into account. The resulting motion together with vibration generated by propulsion and other machinery are significant factors in the performance and behaviour of equipment and materials during processing, handling and transportation operations at sea. In deep-sea mining operations at depths of 2-5 km the effects of associated pressure, salinity and temperature must also be dealt with. The paper reviews the present state of such knowledge as currently practised in continental-shelf operations, and as proposed in various deep-sea mining operations. Associated research requirements for future mineral exploitation in the deep-sea environment are discussed.

Author(s):  
A.A. Dronic A.A. ◽  

The article presents an assessment of the stability of introduced cherry varieties to spring return frosts in 2020 in the conditions of the sharply continental climate of the Astrakhan region. As a result of unfavorable weather conditions, the total damage score of all varieties was 2-5 points. Almost all the studied varieties showed an insufficient level of resistance to recurrent frosts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 2106
Author(s):  
Abdelali El Aroudi ◽  
Mohamed Debbat ◽  
Mohammed Al-Numay ◽  
Abdelmajid Abouloiafa

Numerical simulations reveal that a single-stage differential boost AC module supplied from a PV module under an Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) control at the input DC port and with current synchronization at the AC grid port might exhibit bifurcation phenomena under some weather conditions leading to subharmonic oscillation at the fast-switching scale. This paper will use discrete-time approach to characterize such behavior and to identify the onset of fast-scale instability. Slope compensation is used in the inner current loop to improve the stability of the system. The compensation slope values needed to guarantee stability for the full range of operating duty cycle and leading to an optimal deadbeat response are determined. The validity of the followed procedures is finally validated by a numerical simulations performed on a detailed circuit-level switched model of the AC module.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8170
Author(s):  
Veronica Sanda Chedea ◽  
Ana-Maria Drăgulinescu  ◽  
Liliana Lucia Tomoiagă  ◽  
Cristina Bălăceanu ◽  
Maria Lucia Iliescu 

Known for its dry and semi-dry white wine, the Târnave vineyard located in central Transylvania is challenged by the current climate change, which has resulted in an increase of the period of active vegetation by approximately 15–20 days, the average annual temperature by 1–1.5 °C and also the amount of useful temperatures (useful thermal balance for the grapevine). Furthermore, the frost periods have been reduced. Transylvania is an important Romanian region for grapevine cultivation. In this context, one can use the climatic changes to expand their wine assortment by cultivating an autochthonous grapevine variety called Amurg. Amurg is a red grape cultivar homologated at SCDVV Blaj, which also homologated 7 cultivars and 11 clones. Because viticulture depends on the stability of meteorological and hydrological parameters of the growing area, its foundations are challenged by climate change. Grapevine production is a long time investment, taking at least five years before the freshly planted vines produce the desired quality berries. We propose the implementation of a climate change-based precision viticulture turn-key solution for environmental monitoring in the Târnave vineyard. This solution aims to evaluate the grapevine’s micro-climate to extend the sustainable cultivation of the Amurg red grapes cultivar in Transylvania with the final goal of obtaining Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) rosé and red wines from this region. Worldwide, the changing conditions from the existing climate (a 30-year average), used in the past hundred years to dictate local standards, such as new and erratic trends of temperature and humidity regimes, late spring freezes, early fall frosts, storms, heatwaves, droughts, area wildfires, and insect infestations, would create dynamic problems for all farmers to thrive. These conditions will make it challenging to predict shifts in each of the components of seasonal weather conditions. Our proposed system also aims to give a solution that can be adapted to other vineyards as well.


Author(s):  
P. A. Tyler ◽  
J. D. Gage

INTRODUCTIONOphiacantha bidentata (Retzius) is a widespread arctic-boreal ophiuroid with a circumpolar distribution in the shallow waters of the Arctic seas and penetrating into the deep sea of the.North Atlantic and North Pacific (Mortensen, 1927, 1933a; D'yakonov, 1954). Early observations of this species were confined to defining zoogeo-graphical and taxonomic criteria including the separation of deep water specimens as the variety fraterna (Farran, 1912; Grieg, 1921; Mortensen, 1933a). Mortensen (1910) and Thorson (1936, pp. 18–26) noted the large eggs (o.8 mm diameter) in specimens from Greenland and Thorson (1936) proposed that this species had ‘big eggs rich in yolk, shed directly into the sea. Much reduced larval stage or direct development’. This evidence is supported by observations of O. bidentata from the White and Barents Seas (Semenova, Mileikovsky & Nesis, 1964; Kaufman, 1974)..


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (8) ◽  
pp. 70-72
Author(s):  
Jianbo Hu ◽  
◽  
Yifeng Di ◽  
Qisheng Tang ◽  
Ren Wen ◽  
...  

In recent years, China has made certain achievements in shallow sea petroleum geological exploration and development, but the exploration of deep water areas is still in the initial stage, and the water depth in the South China Sea is generally 500 to 2000 meters, which is a deep water operation area. Although China has made some progress in the field of deep-water development of petroleum technology research, but compared with the international advanced countries in marine science and technology, there is a large gap, in the international competition is at a disadvantage, marine research technology and equipment is relatively backward, deep-sea resources exploration and development capacity is insufficient, high-end technology to foreign dependence. In order to better develop China's deep-sea oil and gas resources, it is necessary to strengthen the development of drilling and completion technology in the oil industry drilling engineering. This paper briefly describes the research overview, technical difficulties, design principles and main contents of the completion technology in deepwater drilling and completion engineering. It is expected to have some significance for the development of deepwater oil and gas fields in China.


Author(s):  
Marius STAN ◽  
◽  
Valentin Paul TUDORACHE ◽  
Lazăr AVRAM ◽  
Mohamed Iyad AL NABOULSI ◽  
...  

Riser systems are integral components of the offshore developments used to recover oil and gas stored in the reservoirs below the earth’s oceans and seas. These riser systems are used in all facets of the development offshore process including exploration and exploitation wells completion/intervention, and production of the hydrocarbons. Their primary function is to facilitate the safe transportation of material, oil and gases between the seafloor oceans and seas and the marine platform. As the water depth increases, the working conditions of this system becomes challenging due to the complex forces and extreme environmental conditions which are impacting the operational mode as well as the stability. In this paper several aspects concerning riser mechanics and the behaviour of the riser column will be evaluated against different operational situations.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralf ◽  
G. David Johnson ◽  
Kevin Conway

Mouthbrooding or oral incubation, the retention of early developmental stages inside of the mouth for an extended period of time, has evolved multiple times in bony fishes1,2. Though uncommon, this form of parental care has been documented and well-studied in several groups of freshwater fishes but is also known to occur in a small number of marine fishes, all inhabiting coastal waters1,2. A recent paper3, reported for the first time mouthbrooding in a deep-water fish species, the zeiform Parazen pacificus, which according to the authors “fills in a gap in the larval literature for this family of fishes and prompts further investigation into other novel reproductive modes of deep-sea fauna.”


Check List ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Wilbert Andrés Pérez-Pech ◽  
Jesper Guldberg Hansen ◽  
Erica DeMilio ◽  
Alberto de Jesús-Navarrete ◽  
Ivonne Martínez Mendoza ◽  
...  

Deep-water sampling in the Perdido Fold Belt, Gulf of Mexico, Mexican Economic Exclusive Zone yielded five specimens of tardigrades belonging to the genus Coronarctus Renaud-Mornant, 1974. The specimens represent the first records of the genus for Mexico. Two two-clawed larvae and two four-clawed larvae of Coronarctus mexicus Romano, Gallo, D’Addabbo, Accogli, Baguley & Montagna, 2011 and a single four-clawed larval specimen of an undescribed Coronarctus species were identified. Taxonomic analysis of the specimens contributed to the knowledge of deep-sea and Mexican marine tardigrades, two data-poor areas of study.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 711-743 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. C. Skinner

Abstract. Given the magnitude and dynamism of the deep marine carbon reservoir, it is almost certain that past glacial – interglacial fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 have relied at least in part on changes in the carbon storage capacity of the deep sea. To date, physical ocean circulation mechanisms that have been proposed as viable explanations for glacial – interglacial CO2 change have focussed almost exclusively on dynamical or kinetic processes. Here, a simple mechanism is proposed for increasing the carbon storage capacity of the deep sea that operates via changes in the volume of southern-sourced deep-water filling the ocean basins, as dictated by the hypsometry of the ocean floor. It is proposed that a water-mass that occupies more than the bottom 3 km of the ocean will essentially determine the carbon content of the marine reservoir. Hence by filling this interval with southern-sourced deep-water (enriched in dissolved CO2 due to its particular mode of formation) the amount of carbon sequestered in the deep sea may be greatly increased. A simple box-model is used to test this hypothesis, and to investigate its implications. It is suggested that up to 70% of the observed glacial – interglacial CO2 change might be explained by the replacement of northern-sourced deep-water below 2.5 km water depth by its southern counterpart. Most importantly, it is found that an increase in the volume of southern-sourced deep-water allows glacial CO2 levels to be simulated easily with only modest changes in Southern Ocean biological export or overturning. If incorporated into the list of contributing factors to marine carbon sequestration, this mechanism may help to significantly reduce the "deficit" of explained glacial – interglacial CO2 change.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. A. Abdullah ◽  
K. A. Lindsay

The quality of the stability of the nonconvective zone of a salinity-gradient solar pond (SGSP) is investigated for an operating protocol in which the flushing procedure exactly compensates for evaporation losses from the solar pond and its associated evaporation pond. The mathematical model of the pond uses simplified, but accurate, constitutive expressions for the physical properties of aqueous sodium chloride. Also, realistic boundary conditions are used for the behaviors of the upper and lower convective zones (LCZs). The performance of a salinity-gradient solar pond is investigated in the context of the weather conditions at Makkah, Saudi Arabia, for several thickness of upper convective zone (UCZ) and operating temperature of the storage zone. Spectral collocation based on Chebyshev polynomials is used to assess the quality of the stability of the pond throughout the year in terms of the time scale for the restoration of disturbances in temperature, salinity, and fluid velocity underlying the critical eigenstate. The critical eigenvalue is found to be real and negative at all times of year indicating that the steady-state configuration of the pond is always stable, and suggesting that stationary instability would be the anticipated mechanism of instability. Annual profiles of surface temperature, salinity, and heat extraction are constructed for various combinations for the thickness of the upper convective zone and storage zone temperature.


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