Design and development of a marine current energy conversion system using hybrid vertical axis turbine

Alam, Md. Jahangir (2009) Design and development of a marine current energy conversion system using hybrid vertical axis turbine. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

[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. Download (7MB)

Abstract

The Ocean Network Seafloor Instrumentation (ONSFI) Project, which commenced in 2007, is a five year multidisciplinary R&D project to design, fabricate and validate 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 compact, low-cost sensors, called 'SEAformatics' 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. -- One of approaches to power the SEAformatics sensor pods is using small marine current turbines that are equipped with an energy conversion system. For such application of a turbine, main constraint is a very low cut-in speed. Slow ocean currents require a low cut-in speed marine current turbine for continuous power to those pods. To alleviate the water speed issue, a self starting, low cut-in speed hybrid vertical axis marine current turbine have been designed and developed at the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland. The developed marine current power generation system is composed of the designed hybrid vertical axis turbine, a permanent magnet generator, an ac-dc rectifier, a dc-dc converter and a battery. The hybrid vertical axis turbine is designed with a drag type Savonius and a lift type Darrieus turbines. Moreover, the battery is required for the stand-alone applications of marine current power generation systems. In order to get maximum available power at load side, a low cost microcontroller based maximum power point tracker have been developed as a part of proposed energy conversion system . This thesis provides details of system design and test results.

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