A Micro Seafloor Marine Current Energy Conversion System

Khan, Md. Nahidul Islam (2008) A Micro Seafloor Marine Current Energy Conversion System. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

[English] PDF (Migrated (PDF/A Conversion) from original format: (application/pdf)) - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (18MB) [English] PDF - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. (Original Version)

Abstract

The Seaformatics project is a five year AIF project that intends to develop to a proof-of-concept seafloor array of wireless marine sensors for use in monitoring seabed processes, including applications such as geological imaging and earthquake detection. Individual low cost sensor pods will be self-powered through ocean bottom currents and will be able to communicate with each other and to the Internet through surface master units to facilitate observation of the ocean floor from shore. After examining the available systems, it was decided that the Savonius rotor was most appropriate. Models were constructed and tested in the wave tank and the wind tunnel at MUN.Scaling Laws that could be used to predict full scale or prototype behaviour were developed. -- A micro sea-floor power generation system has been designed and developed at Electrical Energy System Lab of Memorial University of Newfoundland to extract few watts electrical power. The proposed power generation system consists of a drag type Savonius rotor, a gear box, a permanent magnet generator, a controlled DC-DC converter, batteries for energy storage, instrumentation and a micro controller based control system for the turbine. Micro controller will control the DC-DC converter to extract the maximum power from the system. Such a control scheme will be based on the voltage, current and speed measurement of the system. Maximum power algorithm based control scheme will ensure that the system is always extracting the maximum power from the water current. This thesis aims to develop a technical and economical viable marine current energy conversion system.

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