A research procedure to obtain a green transport plan for deep sea mining systems

This paper presents a comparison of the existing research about the deep sea mining industry, including the deep sea mining necessity, the mineral transport process, the simulation method (numerical and experimental) and the required evaluation parameters. The objective of this paper is to find a research direction to design a green transport plan for a deep sea mining system. The research combines the macroscopic research of the dynamic response simulation of the ship-pipe-miner system together with the microscopic research of the solid-liquid two-phase flow propagation. The coupling work of the macroscopic research and microscopic research follows the fluid-structure interaction principle. An optimal transport plan can be determined depending on the multi-criteria evaluation system. Finally, a control system of the deep sea mining system links the optimization results with the realistic production plans. The research conducted in this paper is meaningful for the pre-design and evaluation of a deep sea mining project.