Abstract
To improve the operational reliability of renewable energy conversion system, high-performance polymers and engineering plastics are used to make some parts and components of the energy conversion device, especially in the marine renewable energy generation field. In this article, special plastic bearings based on the material of polyoxymethylene (POM) were designed and applied in the power generation device of both tidal current energy and island wind energy. The properties of POM were analyzed, and the load of a POM ball was tested. Special structures of the plastic bearings were designed to meet the requirements of pressure resistance and to reduce the friction. These plastic bearings had been used in the prototypes of 20 kW tidal current turbine generation device and 15 kW island wind turbine generation device. According to the prototypes’ operation, the results indicate that these plastic bearings work well and are very suitable for the application in renewable energy conversion system. By optimizing the structure, such plastic bearings would be generalized and applied in the renewable energy generation device with a higher power level.
Highlights
Engineering plastics are a group of plastic materials that possess excellent comprehensive properties [1,2,3], such as strong rigidity, high specific strength, less creep, good corrosion resistance, high thermal stability, electrical insulation, ease of manufacturing, and so on
In the small-scale wind turbine generation system, we mainly developed the yaw wheel bearing, including the axial part and the radial part, which are shown in Fig. (2)
In the marine tidal current turbine generation system, based on the analysis in Section 2.2 and the structure of the generation device shown in Fig. (3), the POM roller bearing was designed as the yaw rotation bearing, illustrated in Fig. (6)
Summary
Engineering plastics are a group of plastic materials that possess excellent comprehensive properties [1,2,3], such as strong rigidity, high specific strength, less creep, good corrosion resistance, high thermal stability, electrical insulation, ease of manufacturing, and so on. They have been widely applied in machinery, automotive, appliance, architecture, chemical industry and other fields [4, 5]. The properties of POM composites including self-lubrication, friction wear, corrosion resistance and mechanical strength were analyzed. The prototypes’ operation based on such plastic bearings was given and discussed
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