SHASHWAT GUPTA RAY
shashwat@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: The CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) has found large deposits of dissolved cobalt, an important micro-nutrient for ocean productivity, in the northern Indian Ocean off the coast of India. If properly harnessed, this discovery can help in realising the country’s ambitious target of meeting 50% of its primary energy needs from renewable energy by 2030 to combat climate change.
Incidentally, the two adjacent oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic, do not have such high cobalt content.
Cobalt is a key component in batteries for electric vehicles and magnets used in wind turbines and other green technology. Small deposits are known to exist in Odisha and Jharkhand, but India’s reserves remain relatively modest.
Currently, there are no active mining leases for cobalt, nickel, lithium, and neodymium in the country for production purposes. The lack of sufficient reserves of this precious metal poses a major obstacle to the country’s clean energy transition plans.
“Presently, there is no production of cobalt in the country from primary cobalt resources. The demand for cobalt is usually met through imports. In the climate change scenario, when we are going to decrease or eliminate the usage of power generated by coal or petroleum products, we have to go for renewable energy. We need to have energy storage devices like batteries, for which cobalt will be necessary,” NIO Director Sunil Kumar Singh told O Heraldo.
“Just like petroleum products, we will be dependent on somebody else for this critical metal. This is not a feasible solution since we are pursuing clean energy in a big way. The encouraging news for us is that there are abundant cobalt resources in our seas, which will remain there for a long time as shelf sediments and dust will continue to supply cobalt in the northern Indian Ocean. The northern Indian Ocean and the Ganga-Brahmaputra river basin are the hub for this critical metal,” Singh added.
It is now important to develop appropriate technology that can harness the metal from seawater and convert it for practical use. When asked whether there was any progress in this direction, the NIO director said efforts were underway to develop in-house technology at NIO.
“Work is going on in our own laboratory, but it is still at a very primitive stage. If this technology gets fully developed as envisaged, we will be able to extract nickel and copper along with cobalt. It can be a game changer,” he said.
He further added that cobalt discovery will also have therapeutic applications, as it can help address vitamin B12 deficiency in humans.
The findings have been recorded in a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles. It has been co-authored by Singh and Nirmalya Malla from CSIR-NIO, Goa, and the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh.