As an emerging drilling technology， riserless mud recovery drilling technology has the advantages of safety and environmental protection， simplified well structure and reduced drilling risk. The traditional riserless mud recovery drilling technology relies on subsea pumps to lift drilling mud from the subsea wellhead to the deck surface， which requires extremely high lifting capacity and reliability of the subsea pumps. Therefore， for future deep-sea drilling， subsea pumps will be the bottleneck restricting the application of riserless mud recovery drilling technology. Drawing on the principle of onshore gas lift reverse circulation drilling， this paper explores the feasibility of use of gas lift technology in part or in whole to replace subsea pumps for mud recovery in terms of equipment availability， flow adjustability， applicable conditions， well control safety， etc. The results show that the performance of gas lift reverse circulation technology and related equipment can meet the requirements of RMR with the features of adjustable up-hole return flow and safety， and it is highly worthy of research.