On-board measurement methodology for the liquid-solid slurry production of deep-seabed mining

Abstract

The mineral resources in deep-seabed are attracting extensive attention because terrestrial natural resources have become progressively depleted. To optimize the mining system for the deep-seabed minerals, the production rate and the solid fraction of liquid-solid slurry production should be estimated and measured, precisely. However, there are very unstable on-board conditions due to the wave, tide, etc. In this research, we studied on on-board measurement methodology to estimate the production rate and the solid fraction of the deep-seabed milling. We proposed a measurement technique using the measured data and physical properties of materials. The technique has been verified by the real sea experiment using pilot-scale lifting system. Also we performed the Fast Fourier Transform (WI) analysis because there are significant noises in the measured data. As a result of the 1+1 analysis, we found that the causes of the noises were due to the vessel behavior by the wave energy and the sloshing effect of the slurry in the storage tank.