Developing a Formula and Maximizing the Power for an Inverted Piston-in-Cylinder Wave Engine

Year 2014, Volume: 4 Issue: 2, 471 - 476, 01.06.2014

Mohammad Sameti Alibakhsh Kasaeian

Abstract

Harvesting energy from the ocean waves has two significant advantages over other renewables: more attractive mean power density and integration into coastal structures. A commonly deployed device is the oscillating water column (OWC), which has so far been mounted on shore and proposed for floating plants. It consists of an air chamber in contact with the sea so that the water column in the chamber oscillates with the waves and makes the air flow in and out of the chamber which turns a turbine. In this paper, two mathematical models were developed for a floating inverted piston-in-cylinder wave engine based on the theoretical fluid dynamics and expressions were proposed for its output power and overall efficiency. The optimum values were found for both the power and efficiency. The derived formulas were compared for two models and the relationship between them were studied.

Keywords

Wave Energy; Inverted Piston-in-Cylinder; Wave Engine

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