ABSTRACT
In recent years, we have witnessed a substantial increase in the interest in maritime mining in the world, which has resulted in the development of many new methods for the exploitation of marine deposits as well as transport of spoil from the seabed to the surface (Karlic, 1984, Depowski, Kotliński, Rühle, Szamalek, 1998, Abramowski and Kotliński, 2011, SPC, 2013, Royal Society, 2017, Sharma, 2017, Jones et al, 2019, Websites: JOGMEC, Nautilus Minerals, Atlantis II Deep, Bluenodules). In their research, the authors have been working on the development of a new concept of transport from the seabed.
The authors have already presented the concept of the principle of operation of an autonomous transport module for transport from the seabed (Filipek and Broda, 2016, 2017, 2018). They designed and constructed a laboratory stand and carried out experiments, the results of which confirmed the applicability of the concept discussed in transport from the seabed. The research also included the determination of the energy source in the transport process and the changes in the average density of the transport module. Three transport concepts from the seabed were also compared in terms of their energy demand. In the next step, the authors addressed the issues of stability of the transport module in the process of immersion and ascent.
In the course of these studies, there appeared the necessity of the theoretical examination of mass transfer between the transport module and the environment, which is the subject of this publication. The in-depth analysis of this issue is essential from the point of view of the practical suitability of the module for transporting from the seabed because the course of mass exchange between the transport module and the environment determines the speed of immersion and ascent.
