Evaluation Method of Pipe Wear for Development of Seafloor Massive Sulfides

Abstract

The evaluation of pipe wear is necessary to design the mining system for development of seafloor massive sulfides. The authors conducted three types of the flow loop wear experiment to obtain the basic data of pipe wear during slurry transport. In these experiments, the characteristics of pipe wear for different inner materials and pipe inclinations were investigated. As a result of the experiments, the wear resistance of SUS304 was shown to be higher than those of plastic and rubber materials, and the wear volume of pipe inclined at 30 degrees was largest in the experiment. Then the influence of solid degradation on the wear rates was also investigated. The authors estimated the wall thickness reduction for the lifting pipe based on the results of the flow loop wear experiments. The estimation results showed that it took 89 days to reduce wall thickness by 1mm for a rigid riser made of SUS304.

Vessel nozzle parameter effects analysis on the ore transportation concentration for deep-sea mining

“…In the pump-vessel combined ore lifting equipment, as shown in Figure 1, the new ore lifting system is invented according to the hydraulic transportation principle, which has many advantages such as high transmission efficiency, long service life, safe and reliable transmission (Takano et al, 2020;Slade et al, 2020). It consists of a water pump, two vessels, transportation pipes and seven control valves.…”

“…ment, as shown in Fig. 1, the new ore lifting system is ion principle, which has many advantages such as high nd reliable transmission (Takano et al, 2020; Slade et essels, transportation pipes and seven control valves. the mining system begins to work, the Valve 3 and 7 is f. When the water pump is turned on, sea water will be tion pipe by the pump.…”