Pressure Loss in Curved Pipe Slurry Transport for Subsea Mining

Abstract For the design and operation of a subsea mining system, it is important to predict pressure loss due to the hydraulic transport of solid particles in the flexible jumper, which connects a seafloor mining tool to a vertical lifting pipe via the subsea slurry pump. The jumper should have steep wave configurations so the mining tool can move freely on the seafloor. In the present paper, we propose a mathematical model to predict the pressure losses of slurry flow in curved pipes. we first calculate the pressure loss in curved pipes with steep wave configuration using the model for inclined straight pipes that we developed in the previous work. Then, we carried out the slurry transport experiment and compared the calculated results with the experimental ones. The results show that the model for straight pipes is able to predict the pressure loss in curved pipes with a high accuracy of more than 92 % for the coefficient of determination. Then we have newly considered the centrifugal forces acting on solid particles in our mathematical model. We compared the calculated results using the new model with the experimental ones. These are in further good agreement, which indicates the new model is more applicable for predicting pressure loss in a flexible jumper with steep wave configuration.