Chapter 180 Unexpected Gains
Three days later.
After seeing the mass spectrometry report sent back by the exploration team, Wu Gang finally figured out what was underground in Area 7.
Magnetite was detected in the cores from three of the drilling points, and this was not pure magnetite, but magnetite containing titanium and vanadium.
Molybdenum and rhenium were also found.
He was no novice in geology and mining, so he quickly reported the matter to the headquarters.
The discovery of iron ore is secondary, while the titanium, vanadium, molybdenum and rhenium associated with iron ore are the important discoveries in this exploration.
In less than two days.
Hundreds of professional geological exploration and mining professionals secretly appeared in Area 7 of the Longgrande Mountain Space Base.
After on-site exploration, the mineralogist Weng Xuehai, who led the team, again determined 12 drilling points based on the surrounding terrain and mountain trends.
Wu Gang was very concerned about this exploration: "Dr. Weng, what do you think of the potential of this mining area? Will it affect the construction of the aerospace base?"
"Preliminary observations show that the reservoirs at the three drill points where minerals were discovered are between 450 and 570 meters deep, with a thickness of about 60 to 70 meters and an area of about 500,000 square meters. The iron ore in this area alone is about 150 million tons."
"so much?"
“It’s just that the grade is a little low. The grade of the samples at three points is only about 34%, which can barely be considered ordinary iron ore! And the burial location is too deep.” Weng Xuehai said somewhat helplessly.
Another mining engineer, Ba Kang, smiled and shook his head: "Dr. Weng, you don't have to worry about this. The company has the technology to solve the mining and ore dressing problems in ultra-deep strata."
Weng Xuehai seemed to have heard some inside information: "Is it the biological erosion technology and fluid boiling extraction technology that you experimented with a while ago?"
"Yes." Bacon nodded.
He is the lead engineer for the technical testing.
Weng Xuehai glanced at the topographic map and said, "If we want to use your new technology, we must use an inclined shaft. Given the surrounding terrain, I guess there won't be enough flat land here."
Hearing this, Wu Gang already knew the other party's subtext.
That is to let the space base adjust the plan as soon as possible. After all, iron ore can be chosen not to be mined, but those rare metals must be mined.
He said directly to the two people: "I will adjust the layout of the base as soon as possible to make enough space for mining."
Ba Kang on the side shook his head and said, "Director Wu, don't make any adjustments for now. You guys should do other work first. We need to explore the general distribution area of the ore layer so that you don't have to make adjustments later."
The reason why he stopped Wu Gang was mainly because the new mining technology had a disadvantage, which was that it was easy to form large areas of voids underground , which would then cause ground collapse.
This requires that there should be no buildings above the mining layer or within one or two kilometers around it to avoid being affected.
This is also the reason why new mining technology can only use inclined shafts and not vertical shafts.
This is to avoid the construction of mining sites directly above the mineral layer.
Wu Gang frowned and said, "Engineer Bakang, will this large-scale mining affect the launch site?"
Bakang looked at the map and said, "From the current trend of the mineral veins, only a part of Area 7 has mineral veins, and no mineral layer has been found on the side close to the launch site. The straight-line distance between the two places is more than 3.6 kilometers. It's not a big problem. We just need to control the scale when we mine."
This is actually one of the advantages of new mining technology.
Traditional underground mining technology not only requires digging mine tunnels, but also requires attention to exhaust ventilation and drainage, especially for ultra-deep veins. These auxiliary facilities must be in place.
Mining drainage can cause a serious problem, which is that the water level of the surrounding groundwater will be affected.
In severe cases, it may even cause the surrounding ground to sink.
The new mining technology does not require miners to go down. Instead, it uses biological erosion to turn the strata into fine particles, then injects water and air to turn the strata into mud fluid, and then uses mud extraction equipment to pump up the mineral mud in the strata.
During this mud pumping process, water will continue to be injected into the mining stratum on the other side to maintain the water level balance of the stratum.
Of course, there is another downside to this type of mining.
That is, in karst landforms, we need to pay attention to underground rivers and caves to prevent genetically modified bacteria from accurately corroding mining strata.
However, in ultra-deep mineral veins, the strata are basically relatively dense rock layers due to years of heavy pressure, so the problem of underground leakage will not be too serious.
Especially the newly discovered Longlang Mountain vanadium-titanium magnetite, the underground strata are quite dense.
The fact that Sapiens developed ultra-deep mining technology was actually due to the environment.
If the Homo Sapiens Company had a large open-pit iron mine like the one in Australia, who would go to mine the ultra-deep veins? It’s not that there are no particularly prominent metal mines in the four controlled areas.
Therefore, we have to find another way and use bioenrichment technology to extract some of the required resources from the ocean.
On the other hand, we need to deeply tap the local mineral potential.
Currently, non-precious metals and rare metals are only mined in open-pit mines and shallow mines around the world.
Especially in areas outside of China, mineral veins below 500 meters underground are usually not mined, mainly because the mining cost is too high and not economically cost-effective.
Not to mention Southeast Asia, let alone 500 meters, even below 100 meters underground is rare.
Hongsavadi's mining technology can only mine the richest ores on the surface in Southeast Asia.
Therefore, deep mining has become another means for Homo sapiens companies to achieve resource self-sufficiency.
Although no large mines have been found in the surface and shallow layers, as long as we dig downwards, there will definitely be many deep and ultra-deep mineral veins that have not been discovered by humans.
Even if the technology is powerful enough, there are plenty of rare metals and gold in the mantle and core.
The prerequisite is that it can be mined.
Homo Sapiens Company does not dare to think about the resources in the mantle and core for the time being, but it has very many ideas about the strata between the surface and 10,000 meters underground.
At least with the new mining technology, there is no major problem in mining mineral veins two or three thousand meters underground, and the mining cost will not be too high.
There are currently two main issues that restrict the promotion of new mining technology.
One is the issue of confidentiality.
The other is exploration. After all, the cost of drilling a formation composition analysis well will increase with the increase of drilling depth.
There is no way to solve the first problem for the time being. After all, as long as Sapiens does not reach the top, these technologies must remain secret.
But the second problem has been solved recently.
The key to solving this problem lies in bioerosion technology.
The specific operation is also very simple. Just use a very thin and long super-hard ejector pin, launched by explosives, and insert it directly into the formation to form a thin and long channel. Then inject a certain amount of erosive bacteria into the microchannel.
This technology can be used to drill ultra-large diameter wells. Even ultra-deep wells can be easily dug to a depth of two to three thousand meters using this technology, and the cost is very low.
The technology at the aerospace base has not yet been updated, but the geological and mineral exploration teams have already started using this new technology.
In addition, this technology can also be used in conjunction with the green umbrella system, so that ultra-deep and ultra-large wells can be drilled without the need to import large-scale drilling equipment.
After all, large-scale drilling equipment has a certain level of technical content, and large-scale imports are not cost-effective. It is also easy for the outside world to analyze that it is engaged in large-scale mining or oil extraction.
