Design and Output Power Evaluation for a Novel Hybrid Wave-Wind Energy Converter

Date
2022-08
Authors
Khaleghi, S
Lie, TT
Baguley, C
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Abstract

The performance of oscillating water column (OWC) wave energy converters (WEC) is highly affected by airflow rate. In this paper, a novel system is proposed that increases airflow rate and, therefore, output power through the integration of a mechanical structure known as a windcatcher with a conventional OWC. To investigate the hydrodynamic behaviour of the proposed system, a non-linear two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is employed, along with the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach. The results of a comparison of the proposed OWC to a conventional type reveal a significant increase in airflow rate through the turbine blades, realizing an increase in converter output power. Moreover, the results show a power generation consistency in the proposed hybrid system, as the amplitude of the oscillatory part of the turbine airflow rate is diminished. Therefore, the proposed OWC converter not only generates significantly more power than a conventional type, it also has smoother power generation performance.

Description
Keywords
Wave energy converter; Oscillating water column; Windcatcher; CFDRANS
Source
Ocean Engineering, Volume 257, 1 August 2022, 111573.
Rights statement
Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in (see Citation). Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. The definitive version was published in (see Citation). The original publication is available at (see Publisher's Version).