Masao Ono

Experimental Studies of Pressure Loss in Inclined Pipe in Slurry Transport for Subsea Mining

For subsea mining, the estimation of pressure loss in the pipe of lifting system and the flexible pipe to connect the mining tool and the lifting system is important to design the mining system. The configuration of flexible pipe is expected to have an inclined part.In the present paper, the authors carried out the experiment to measure the pressure loss in inclined pipes using alumina beads to investigate the effect of inclination angle of pipe on the pressure loss. Furthermore, a mathematical model to estimate the pressure loss in inclined pipes was proposed and validated through the experiments. As the result of the validation, it was confirmed that the proposed model could be applied to the pressure loss estimation in inclined pipes.Copyright

Evaluation of Wearing Pipe for Subsea Mining With Large Particles in Slurry Transportation

For a fundamental understanding of pipe wear under hydraulic transportation of deep-sea mining, a small scale test is conducted because there are many restrictions in conducting a full scale test. The small scale test apparatus are set up using the pipes of about 80mm in diameter and the rocks of which maximum particle diameters are about 20mm are used. In the test, the pipe materials and the pipe inclination are changed to evaluate the differential of the amount of pipe material loss. Furthermore, the amount of the pipe material loss in full scale is estimated based on the small scale test results.Copyright