Geochemistry of some manganese nodules

DOI

The manganese nodules occur in greater or less quantity all over the ocean-bed, and most abundantly in the Pacific. They occur in all sizes, from minute grains to masses of a pound weight, and even greater, and form nodular concretions of concentric shells, round a nucleus, which is very frequently a piece of pumice or a shark's tooth. Their outside has a peculiar and very characteristic mammillated surface, which enables them to be identified at a glance. When freshly brought up they are very soft, being easily scraped to powder with a knife. They gradually get harder on exposure to the air.The powder, heated in a closed tube, gives out water which re-acts alkaline, and has an empyreumatic odour. Heated with strong hydrochloric acid, it liberates abundance of chlorine, and the residue which remains is white, consisting of silica, clay, and sand, the sand being the same as is found in the bottom mud from the same locality. Their composition varies greatly, different nodules containing different quantities of mechanically admixed mud, and the number of different elements found in them is very large. Copper, iron, cobalt, nickel, manganese, alumina, lime, magnesia, silica, and phosphoric acid have been detected in a large number; but I have not as yet been able to make a complete analysis of any of them. I have, however, made a few determinations of the most important component substances. For this purpose the outside and densest layers of the nodules were selected, and portions of them were pulverised and dried for ten or twelve hours at 140° C. The amount of chlorine liberated on treatment with hydrochloric acid was determined by Bunsen's method, and the iron was determined by titration with stannous chloride. The samples analysed were from four different localities.

The oceanic nodules analysed come from the Challenger expedition (1872-1876). It is historically the first set of geochemistry measurements ever published in the literature about manganese nodules from the deep sea.From 1983 until 1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions. At the time it was the most extended data compilation on ferromanganese deposits world wide. Initially published in a proprietary format incompatible with present day standards it was jointly decided by AWI and NOAA to transcribe this legacy data into PANGAEA. This transfer is augmented by a careful checking of the original sources when available and the encoding of ancillary information (sample description, method of analysis...) not present in the NOAA-MMS database.

Supplement to: Buchanan, John Young (1919): Note on the manganese nodules found on the bed of the ocean. In: Buchanan, J Y: Accounts rendered of work done and things seen. Cambridge at the University Press (Reprint. London: Forgotten Books, 2013), Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, IX(7), 158-159

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.847301
Related Identifier https://archive.org/details/accountsrendered00buchuoft
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.7289/V52Z13FT
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.7289/V53X84KN
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.847301
Provenance
Creator Buchanan, John Young
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 1878
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 39 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-149.500W, -42.700S, 134.167E, 37.867N)
Temporal Coverage Begin 1874-03-13T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 1875-10-06T00:00:00Z