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RobertDyck

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From: Winnipeg, Canada

Registered: 2002-08-20

Posts: 7,931

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Volcanic Mining

A few years ago, Lōʻihi erupted. The next island in the chain of Hawaii islands. That got me thinking. Current mining digs ore out of the ground, then we need to smelt it by heating until it melts. But a volcano is molten rock pouring out of the ground. It may not be the richest ore, but it's already molten, no need to melt.

Volcanic Mining would consist of sticking a pipe of refractory material down into a volcanic vent. This wouldn't work with an explosive volcano, just one that slowly and gently oozes lava. Hawaii has such a volcano, and Iceland, and today's news is about a new island off Japan.

New island appears off Japan's coast

This wouldn't work everywhere; probably only these 3 places. But there it could work. The lava would be piped into a smelter. Iron requires carbon monoxide to remove oxygen, leave iron metal and carbon dioxide. Iron produced typically has too much carbon, so adding hydrogen gas would produce useful steel. Could excess heat from lava boil sea water, producing steam to run a generator? Then use that power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. There's your hydrogen for smelting. Steel requires some carbon, so it would need some carbon monoxide.

I wonder how much steel you would get from lava? And could you extract other products? Sulphur, magnesium? Multi-step smelting.

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,368

Re: Volcanic Mining

For RobertDyck re Quiet Topic ...

This topic was created in 2015 and no one picked up on it.

It seems worth developing, so I'm bringing it back into view.

A related aspect of this topic is mining the cooled output of a volcano.

The material is harder to work when it has solidified, but on the ** other ** hand, it is (probably) a lot safer to work with.

(th)