Accumulator-Based Deep-Sea Microbe Gastight Sampling Technique

1.IntroductionPlenty of microbes exist in deep sea(Jiang,2000).They can survive and propagate under theconditions of extraordinary cold or heat and high pressure(Liu,2001).Studies on deep-sea microbesshowthat they have the function of decomposing petroleu…

Accumulator-Based Deep-Sea Microbe Gastight Sampling Technique

The accumulator is used as a pressure compensation device to realize deep-sea microbe gastight sampling. Four key states of the accumulator are proposed to describe the pressure compensation process and a corresponding mathematical model is established to investigate the relationship between the results of pressure compensation and the parameters of the accumulator. Simulation results show that during the falling process of the sampler, the accumulator's real opening pressure is greater than its precharge pressure; when the sampling depth is 6000 m and the accumulator's precharge pressure is less than 30 MPa, to increase the accumulator's precharge pressure can improve pressure compensation results obviously. Laboratory experiments at 60 MPa show that the accumulator is an effective and reliable pressure compensation device for deep-sea microbe samplers. The success in sea trial at a depth of 2000 m in the South China Sea shows that the mathematical model and laboratory experiment results are reliable.