Damen Dredging Equipment delivers standard dredging components. Recently the Damen dredge pumps and valves were fitted in remote operated deep sea mining vehicles.
These deep sea mining vehicles, also called Seafloor Production Tools (SPTs), have been manufactured by Soil Machine Dynamics (SMD). Damen Dredging Equipment designed and built three SPTs, each for a specific task.
The first machine, the Auxiliary Cutter, is a preparatory machine that deals with rough terrain and creates
benches for the other machines to work; Damen
delivered an electrically driven dredge pump type BP45-1100 for it, plus a number of dredge valves. The second machine, the Bulk Cutter, has higher cutting capacity. Damen delivered another dredge pump and dredge
valve set for that. The third machine is the Collecting Machine which collects the cut material and pumps it
to the next station. For this Collecting Machine, Damen delivered a customised cutter unit, 3 electrically driven dredge pumps type E-BP2320 as well as a number of
dredge valves.
The first mining operations are scheduled for 2018, where the deep sea mining vehicles will be working in Papua New Guinea on Nautilus’ Solwara 1 copper-gold mining project.
