• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.277-287
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• 2007

To understand the effects of the powdered manganese nodule and sea bottom sediment pumped up with nodules on the mining process, the shattering ratio of manganese nodule and their physical properties are analyzed. The self shattering ratio and crushing shattering ratio are about 27% and about 3%, respectively. Then total shattering ratio is about 30%. The initial turbidity of the powdered manganese nodule and the bottom sediment show high, i.e., about 3,100 and 1,850 respectively. But their turbidities decrease rapidly with time. After 1 hour, turbidity of the powdered manganese nodule drops to about 1,570 and that of the bottom sediment to 1,310. The turbidity of Na-bentonite changes from 820 to 730 after 1 h and to 700 after 2 h. The viscosity of powdered manganese nodule is $1.4{\sim}1.5cP$, and the viscosity of bottom sediment is less than 1 cP. The viscosity fo Na-bentonite is initially 37.2 and increase with time to 86.4 cP after 30 min. The high initial turbidity of powdered manganese nodule is due to dark color of the powder. The high specific gravity makes rapid precipitation and then decreases the turbidity rapidly. The bottom sediment shows high initial turbidity because of easy suspension with very fine particle size. But it cannot be hydrated and formed gel in suspension, then it is easily precipitated. However Na-bentonite is hydrated to the expended state and makes gel state, then it shows high turbidity and high viscosity. These physical properties of the powdered manganese nodule suggest that the powder of manganese nodule should not make scaling inside of lifting pipe or pump. And the bottom sediment lifted up with manganese nodule should not play the role of drilling mud shch as Na-bentonite.