Seabed resource lifting apparatus
AssigneeLakshmi Co., Ltd.
InventorsTakatoshi KODAIRA, Ichiro NAKATANI
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present invention relates to a system and its equipments to collect mineral ores on the seabed and to float them up to the sea surface by utilizing the buoyancy of a liquid having a specific gravity less than that of water at room temperature. It is an underwater navigator capable of autonomous navigation that descends at a specific gravity of around 1.0 with a ballast that cancels buoyancy when descending from the sea surface, and ascends at a specific gravity of around 1.0 by exchanging mineral ores with the ballast on the seabed. On the seafloor, it is accompanied by a device that collects seabed mineral ores for the underwater vehicle.
Claims3
In a Deepsea Crane structure featuring a buoyancy tank connector that consolidates suspension ropes from three or more main buoyancy tanks into a single point and suspends a Cargo Compartment from this buoyancy tank connector, in order to detach said Cargo Compartment from each main buoyancy tank and retrieve it using a crane on a surface command ship when the Deepsea Crane is floating on the sea surface. a sub buoyancy tank with a length of cable capable of surfacing directly above the sea surface from the buoyancy tank connector is provided on the buoyancy tank connector. During sea surface emergence of the Deepsea Crane, the crane on the surface command ship raises the sub buoyancy tank above the sea surface gap between the multiple main buoyancy tanks. Furthermore, using a lifting hook positioned above the sub buoyancy tank, the crane on the surface command ship is capable of lifting and separating the Cargo Compartment from the multiple main buoyancy tanks for retrieval, thus characterizing the Deepsea Crane.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.