The newly built lifting test installation includes two towers of pipestring, five working platforms and instrumentations. The height of two towers is 30 meters. Inner diameter of lifting pipe is 204mm. One way and circular lifting tests can be run in this laboratory. In the circular lifting test, the nodules in the storage bin can fall back to the storage bin after passing the feeder, the pump and the pipe. To simulate sea level during the tests, the storage bin and water tank is acted on water head of 30 meters to make back flow close to mining operation as much as possible. With such set of lifting, pump can be tested under low revolution, and simulation of discharge for the pipestring can be done when accidental stop is encountered. In one way transporting tests, the nodules transport directly to a separator with pressure regulation via the feeder, the pump and pipe. Nodules no longer return to the storage bin. Maximum pressure can reach 2.5MPa by adjustment of the opening of the valve. With such set of lifting test, the pump performance with nodules can be obtained.
The lifting subsystem is one of the most important elements of deepsea mining system. A lifting test installation was built to verify the design of the lifting pump, to simulate the process flow of lifting system of deepsea mining, to test different slurry concentrations, flow velocities and particle sizes of hydraulic lifting, to examine the capability of overflowing and reflux of coarse slurry in the annular interval channel of pump and motor which is the performance and the basis of improve and design of lifting pump, to test various pumping heads under large range of resistance characteristic of pipeline network by tuning up and controlling the pressure of pipeline outlet.
