Abstract
Deep sea mining activities require excavation of material at the sea floor, transport of the material from the sea floor to the sea surface and processing of the material afterwards. One way to transport the material from the sea floor to sea surface is by means of a riser with centrifugal pump booster stations. In this research it is investigated whether the riser can get blocked by the solids, because blockage would terminate the entire mining operation. By means of dedicated laboratory experiments and the construction of a one dimensional flow model, the risk of riser blockage has been investigated. The experiments provide support for the model equations and they provide valuable insights in blockage mechanisms. The one dimensional model can be used to simulate the transport process with different, user defined scenario's.
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