TY - JOUR

T1 - Factors controlling rare earth element plus yttrium enrichment in Fe–Mn crusts from Canary Islands Seamounts (NE Central Atlantic)

AU - Marino, E.

AU - González, F. J.

AU - Kuhn, T.

AU - Madureira, P.

AU - Somoza, L.

AU - Medialdea, T.

AU - Lobato, A.

AU - Miguel, C.

AU - Reyes, J.

AU - Oeser, M.

N1 - Funding Information: This research is funded by the ATLANTIS project (PID2021-124553OB-I00) of the Spanish State Investigation Agency (AEI), European contract EMODnet-Geology (EASME/EMFF/2016/1.31.2-Lot 1/SI2.750862), and the Horizon Europe projects GSEU (HORIZON-CL5-2021-D3-02-14, Project 101075609) and TRIDENT (Grant agreement ID: 101091959). Authors would also like to thank all the staff of the General Laboratories of the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME-CSIC) for their help in obtaining the different results. Raman analysis were supported by Portuguese national funds through the FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. within the projects UIDB/04449/2020 and UIDP/04449/2020 (HERCULES Laboratory). C.M. thanks, DL57/2016/CP1372/CT0012 (“Norma Transitória”). We also thanks reviewers and editor for their constructive comments useful to improve the quality of the manuscript.

PY - 2023/10

Y1 - 2023/10

N2 - Marine minerals are important because concentrate in their structure high contents of strategic and critical elements as rare earth elements. Forty-two samples from eight seamounts of Canary Islands Seamount Province (CISP) have been analyzed in order to evaluate their rare earth elements plus yttrium contents (REY). Highest contents of REY are related to hydrogenetic minerals and essentially Fe-vernadite (on average 3000 μg/g). Diagenetic minerals, on the other hand, show the lowest REY contents with an average content of 260 μg/g. These differences also depend on the growth rates, hydrogenetic minerals with growth rates between 0.5 and 5 mm/Ma allow the incorporation of more REY in their structure. REY contents in studied samples varies depending several factors associated with depth and location, shallowest samples presumably growth near or within the oxygen minimum zone are the most enriched with up to 3800 μg/g due to local enrichment of these elements and the slowest growth rate promoted by the reduced ambient conditions while deeper samples around 3000 m water depth show 2800 μg/g. Location also has a role in REY contents essentially due to the presence of different currents. Samples faced to north are exposed to the more oxygenated waters of the North Atlantic Deep Water and are depleted in REY if compared with deeper samples facing to south to the more oxic Antarctic Bottom Water. Finally, the case of study made on three different seamounts of the CISP show that Fe–Mn crusts from this area could provide on average 130 tons of hydrometallurgical recovered REY (based on 1 km2 areal crust coverage) together with interesting quantity of several other strategic and base elements as Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, V, Mo between others.

AB - Marine minerals are important because concentrate in their structure high contents of strategic and critical elements as rare earth elements. Forty-two samples from eight seamounts of Canary Islands Seamount Province (CISP) have been analyzed in order to evaluate their rare earth elements plus yttrium contents (REY). Highest contents of REY are related to hydrogenetic minerals and essentially Fe-vernadite (on average 3000 μg/g). Diagenetic minerals, on the other hand, show the lowest REY contents with an average content of 260 μg/g. These differences also depend on the growth rates, hydrogenetic minerals with growth rates between 0.5 and 5 mm/Ma allow the incorporation of more REY in their structure. REY contents in studied samples varies depending several factors associated with depth and location, shallowest samples presumably growth near or within the oxygen minimum zone are the most enriched with up to 3800 μg/g due to local enrichment of these elements and the slowest growth rate promoted by the reduced ambient conditions while deeper samples around 3000 m water depth show 2800 μg/g. Location also has a role in REY contents essentially due to the presence of different currents. Samples faced to north are exposed to the more oxygenated waters of the North Atlantic Deep Water and are depleted in REY if compared with deeper samples facing to south to the more oxic Antarctic Bottom Water. Finally, the case of study made on three different seamounts of the CISP show that Fe–Mn crusts from this area could provide on average 130 tons of hydrometallurgical recovered REY (based on 1 km2 areal crust coverage) together with interesting quantity of several other strategic and base elements as Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, V, Mo between others.

KW - Fe–Mn Crusts

KW - High resolution analyses

KW - Rare earth elements plus yttrium enrichment

KW - Water masses influence

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85171561091&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.margeo.2023.107144

DO - 10.1016/j.margeo.2023.107144

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85171561091

VL - 464

JO - Marine geology

JF - Marine geology

SN - 0025-3227

M1 - 107144

ER -