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| Technology Projects > Deep Sea Mining > Facilities |
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A 320 sq.m work area with a 15ton EOT crane is available where Integration, assembly and testing of the Underwater Mining machine being executed. The integration Bay is supported by electronics, electrical and metrology laboratory. |
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| Integration Bay |
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Test Pond for testing of Underwater Crawler: |
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A test pond with a jetty was created for testing the underwater crawler underwater to test the behaviour of the subsystems underwater. The test pond is 4.0 metres depth, 50 metres length and 15 metres width |
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| Crawler testing in test pond |
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The integration and assembly of the Underwater Mining machine requires a material testing laboratory equipped with certain minimum requirements. Some of the common equipments installed in metrology lab are Rockwell Hardness testing machine, Dead weight tester, Granite surface table etc. |
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| Hardness testing machine |
Dead weight tester |
Granite surface table | |
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Hyperbaric Test Facility: |
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Hyperbaric test facility is used to simulate the pressure in Deep-sea environment inside a high pressure vessel. The facility has been designed to test components with external pressure up to 90 MPa (900 bar) max., which is approximately equal to 9000m water depth. This facility is the first of its kind in India. Testing in this facility can save lot of time and money for qualifying underwater components, which otherwise would have been by actual testing in the sea at that depth.
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| Hyperbaric Chamber |
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Equipment Available in the group: |
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The integration and assembly shop floor encompasses various sophisticated test equipment & instruments which are being utilized during building of the system. Some of the instruments available with the group are listed below:
- Hydrostatic Pressure testing Chamber
- Optic fiber Splicing machine
- Optical attenuation measuring kit
- OTDR (Optical Time Domain Reflecto-meter)
- BDV Oil tester
- Oil dehydration unit
- Hydraulic test rig
- Gamma ray scintillation counter
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| Products Developed: |
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| 1. Sub-sea enclosure: |
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A Sub-sea enclosure was designed and realized indigenously for the Data Acquisition system (DAC) of Underwater crawler is fabricated from stainless steel material (SS-316L). The enclosure has a hemispherical cover plate which locates around 22 underwater connectors. The enclosure is tested and qualified for 50bar pressure meeting it’s design specification.
The group has successfully designed and realized Sub-sea enclosures of different sizes and material for different depth rating, converting many land based systems/sensors to Sub-sea systems.
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| DAC enclosure |
| 2. Underwater transformer: |
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The Underwater Mining system employs high voltage transmission to reduce voltage drop along the cable and to reduce the cross section/weight of the cable. In such system the high voltages may have to be stepped down to the operating voltage through Sub-sea power transformers. These transformers have special enclosure and terminations and employ pressure compensation. | |
| Underwater Transformer |
| 3. Underwater load cell: |
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It is a special type of load cell used in the underwater systems to measure the weight of the system underwater. The system is designed with a differential pressure transducer and the enclosure is filled with oil and pressure compensated. The measuring system is designed for full ocean depth rating. The system is being extensively tested and calibrated in our test facility. | |
| Underwater Load cell |
| 4. Winch test platform: |
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NIOT has developed Deep-sea winches indigenously for use in various projects. The winch load test facility is established to study the performance and qualify the winch for its safe handling capacity (SWL). The test setup also enables to check the hydraulic & electrical systems at different load conditions. | |
| Winch testing |
| 5. Hydraulic test Rig: |
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NIOT is using various hydraulic systems like high pressure proportional control valves and high pressure Sub-sea hydraulic pumps. These systems must be qualified and tested for its Sub-sea operating conditions. The test rig is also used for calibration and determining the pressure/flow characteristics. | |
| Hydraulic test rig |
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