January 2016: the building and testing of the electric motor

One task of the project is to develop, build and use the test facilities for testing of the relevant Vertical Transport System. The most critical sub system is the booster station. Looking at the booster station the electric motor is the component with the lowest Technology Readiness Level and the highest technical risk. To de-risk this component MTI and IHC have developed and built an electric motor suited for driving a centrifugal pump in an extreme compact execution for use in the deep sea and suitable for a booster station. The motor pump combination is designed to  be capable of transporting mined solids to the ocean surface.

 The Deep Sea Special Motor development
The achieved current status is an existing standard Permanent Magnet motor that has been adapted on all of its mayor components.
This prototype is named the “DSSM” which stands for „Deep Sea Special Motor“, which has all the required innovations built in that are projected for the final DSSM design.

The DSSM test facility at the RDM Campus
A test facility for testing the DSSM in a submerged environment has been built at the IHC premises on the RDM Campus in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. An almost complete automation and measuring system is part of the test facility and together with the logging system all data of each test can be measured and logged. Each of the DSSM innovations is tested for its functioning and durability at the RDM Campus test facility.

Currently, together with our Blue Mining partner NTNU, preparations are made to be able to test the motor Norwegian waters at a water depth of 500m. These tests will be performed in June 2016.