The depletion of inland deposits of natural resources and the increasing demand for some raw materials have resulted in the growing interest in deep sea exploitation of natural deposits. This gives an impulse to the mounting research and development of methods of exploitation of natural deposits from the sea and ocean floors, which are not limited to petrol and gas. The main area of difficulty in opencast mining methods conducted at considerable depths is the transportation process from the sea floor to the surface. The methods employed so far, such as continuous line bucket (CLB), hydraulic pumping (HP) and air-lift pumping (ALP), have both advantages and disadvantages. The most salient problem is their considerable energy consumption resulting in great costs, hence the need for the development of less expensive methods. The authors have suggested a new method, involving the use of pyrotechnical materials as a source of energy in the transportation from the sea floor and have presented its theoretical grounding. Special emphasis has been placed on determining the depth to which the method can be applied and the energy needed in transportation in relation to the density of the transported substance (output).

In this article the authors discuss the concept of using pyrotechnical materials for transportation in deep sea environment. The use of pyrotechnical materials in underwater transportation involves their use as a source of energy (needed, for instance, in emptying the ballast tank). The authors presented the experimental verification of the usefulness of pyrotechnical materials in transporting from great depth. In the experiments, a modified composition black powder was used as source of energy. In the research the authors focused on two methods of controlling the pyrotechnical reaction effects, i.e., mechanical suppression of the blast, so as to reduce its negative effect on the housing of the transporter, and control of the pyrotechnical reaction itself. The obtained results confirm the possibility of using pyrotechnical materials in transportation of deposits from considerable depth. Introduction Ongoing depletion of land mineral resources and, on the other hand, an increase in the consumption of some raw materials cause an increasing interest in underwater exploitation of mineral resources. This is an impulse for increasingly intensive research and development of mineral resource technology exploration from sea and ocean floors. The scope of this interest includes not only crude oil and natural gas. Sea mining of the shelf area (Karlic, 1984; Depowski et al., 1998) provides many metal materials, such as titan, zircon, tin, gold, platinum and iron sands. Diamond, phosphorite, gravel and sand deposits have been effectively explored, not to mention such resources as sulphur and bituminous coal deposits. Great hopes are pinned upon extensive land polymetallic nodules and seafloor massive sulphides (SMS) (SPC,