Evolution Trend Research of Global Ocean Power Generation Based on a 45-Year Scientometric Analysis

Lisu Chen,Tianzhen Wang,Wei Li,Jie Li,Qiang Fu

doi:10.3390/jmse9020218

Abstract

Since 1973, studies have explored ocean power generation from different perspectives. However, in the past 45 years, few studies have attempted to comprehensively review the existing studies on ocean power generation using wave energy, tidal current energy, ocean thermal energy, salinity gradient energy, bio-mass energy, and gas hydrates. In this study, we collected 5262 studies published from 1973 to 2018 for scientometric visualization analysis and drew a knowledge map of the ocean power generation field. The results show that the most important contributions to the research of ocean power generation mainly came from the United States, China, Britain, Italy, Spain, Japan, Norway, Germany, France, and Denmark. Ocean power generation research is mainly divided into two stages. From 1973 to 2007, there were relatively few studies and no obvious hot topics. From 2008 to 2018, the knowledge fields mainly focused on ocean biomass power generation, the exploitation of natural gas hydrates, the utilization of wave energy and tidal energy, the research and optimization of energy generators, the storage and management of ocean energy, and numerical simulations of marine climates. In addition, the joint utilization of wind energy and wave energy is also a current research topic of interest, including joint assessment of the two energy potentials, the research and development of equipment, and numerical simulations of joint power generation projects.

Highlights

Urban expansion and the development of industry have brought a lot of problems [1,2].One of them is the environmental, economic, and cost issues caused by the current dependence on fossil energy
The ocean has more available resources, including organisms living in seawater; chemical elements and fresh water dissolved in seawater; energy generated by seawater movement, such as waves, tides, and tidal currents; heat stored in seawater; resources contained in deep seabeds, various solid minerals, such as gas hydrates; pressure differences formed in deep seawater and the salinity difference between seawater and fresh water
We propose the reason is that the world has arrived at a consensus that the excessive carbon dioxide emissions and the sharp consumption of non-clean energy, such as oil, may bring great harm and potential threat to human survival

Summary

Introduction

Urban expansion and the development of industry have brought a lot of problems [1,2].One of them is the environmental, economic, and cost issues caused by the current dependence on fossil energy. Urban expansion and the development of industry have brought a lot of problems [1,2]. The ocean has more available resources, including organisms living in seawater; chemical elements and fresh water dissolved in seawater; energy generated by seawater movement, such as waves, tides, and tidal currents; heat stored in seawater; resources contained in deep seabeds, various solid minerals, such as gas hydrates; pressure differences formed in deep seawater and the salinity difference between seawater and fresh water. How to obtain clean energy from the ocean, which covers more than 70% of the Earth, has become a focus of the energy industry. The clean natural energy in the ocean mainly includes wave energy, tidal current energy, ocean thermal energy, salinity gradient energy, bio-mass energy, and gas hydrates. According to measurements and calculations, the theoretical tidal energy potential (including both tidal stream and tidal range) was calculated as

Methods

Results

Conclusion