A buoyancy vertical transport system of deep-sea mining

Highlights:•This paper describes a kind of buoyancy vertical transport system for deep-sea mining.•This new transport system is based on buoyancy and gravity.•It could work in arbitrary depth of water but cheaper.•The design principles of the new system have been clearly reported. Generally speaking, the systems of deep-sea mining consist of a mining support vessel at surface, a seafloor collector on seabed, and a vertical transport system connecting them. The traditional vertical transport systems of deep-sea mining, which are either hydraulic or airlift, have low efficiency and high cost. In this paper, a kind of buoyancy vertical transport system of deep-sea mining is briefly described. Unlike the traditional ones, this new transport system is based on buoyancy and gravity, which could work in arbitrary depth of water but cheaper.