Experimental Studies of Air-Lift Pump for Deep Sea Mining

The air-lift pumping system is one of the promising method for subsea mineral lifting. It is significant to figure out the relation between water flux and injected air volume or submergence ratio. In this paper, the authors conducted the experiment to obtain basic data for vertical air-lift pumping. As the results of the experiment, the water flux increased with increasing the submergence ratio. Then the water flux increased with increasing the injected air volume up to a value. In addition, the authors calculated the solid flux using large internal diameter of pipe. The calculated results are in good agreement with the experimental ones.