[This poster won 3rd price in the 2016 ICOE Poster Award]
ABSTRACT
Hydrokinetic conversion systems, albeit mostly at its early stage of development, may appear suitable in harnessing energy from such renewable resources (tides, wind, etc.). A concept of tidal energy converter (TEC) which is based on shape of the conventional water wheels, is introduced in this study. Basically, this turbine has several special features that are potentially more advantageous than the conventional tidal turbines, such as propeller type tidal turbines.
The research aims to study the potential possibility of eleven-blade turbine using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in extracting the hydrokinetic energy of tidal current and converting it into electricity, and evaluate the performance of the turbine at different given arrangements of blades which are inclined to the wheel centerline with angles of 0, 10, 20 and 30 degrees. In all cases of tip-speed ratio (TSR), the straight blades type (or inclined to the wheel’s centreline with an angle of 0 degree) showed the most effective performance than the others. In the other words, this type extracts tidal stream energy better than all cases in the study.
In addition, the torque extraction at the rotor shaft of the 0 degree inclined blade type is the most uniform comparing to the others due to the less interrupted and fluctuated generation of force for a period of time.
