Assessment of primary energy conversions of oscillating water columns. II. Power take-off and validations

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Date
2014-09-29
Authors
Sheng, Wanan
Alcorn, Raymond
Lewis, Anthony
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American Institute of Physics
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Research Projects
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Abstract
This is the second part of the assessment of primary energy conversions of oscillating water columns (OWCs) wave energy converters. In the first part of the research work, the hydrodynamic performance of OWC wave energy converter has been extensively examined, targeting on a reliable numerical assessment method. In this part of the research work, the application of the air turbine power take-off (PTO) to the OWC device leads to a coupled model of the hydrodynamics and thermodynamics of the OWC wave energy converters, in a manner that under the wave excitation, the varying air volume due to the internal water surface motion creates a reciprocating chamber pressure (alternative positive and negative chamber pressure), whilst the chamber pressure, in turn, modifies the motions of the device and the internal water surface. To do this, the thermodynamics of the air chamber is first examined and applied by including the air compressibility in the oscillating water columns for different types of the air turbine PTOs. The developed thermodynamics is then coupled with the hydrodynamics of the OWC wave energy converters. This proposed assessment method is then applied to two generic OWC wave energy converters (one bottom fixed and another floating), and the numerical results are compared to the experimental results. From the comparison to the model test data, it can be seen that this numerical method is capable of assessing the primary energy conversion for the oscillating water column wave energy converters.
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Keywords
Oscillating water columns , OWC , Wave energy converter , Wave energy production , OWC device , Hydrodynamic performance , Air turbine power take-off
Citation
Sheng, W., Alcorn, R. and Lewis, A. (2014) 'Assessment of primary energy conversions of oscillating water columns. II. Power take-off and validations' Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, 6 053114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4896851
Copyright
© 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. The following article appeared in Sheng et al., Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy 6, 053114 (2014) and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4896851