STUDY ON PIPE WEAR EVALUATION BASED ON LARGE SCALE EXPERIMENT FOR DEEP SEA MINING

摘要

Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) has been conducting R&D of production system for Seafloor Massive Sulfides (SMS) mining. In order to reach commercialization stage in SMS development, the pipe wear due to slurry flow is one of many technical issues to be solved. In the present paper, the authors conducted the large scale experiment using full scale pipes to obtain the various data on pipe wear, and investigated the pipe wear amount in commercial operation. In the experiment, SUS 304 and UHPE were used for the inner materials of test pieces. In addition, the test pieces were installed in the vertical, horizontal and inclined section. Then the authors estimated the thickness reduction of pipe due to slurry flow based on the experimental results.