Abstract
Sea ports are infrastructures with substantial energy demands and often responsible for air pollution and other environmental problems, which may be minimized by using renewable energy, namely electricity harvested from ocean waves. In this regard, a wide variety of concepts to harvest wave energy are available and some shoreline technologies are already in an advanced development phase. The SE@PORTS project aims to assess the suitability and viability of existing wave energy conversion technologies to be integrated in harbor breakwaters, in order to take advantage of their high exposure to ocean waves. This paper describes the experimental study carried out to assess the performance of a hybrid wave energy converter (WEC) integrated in the rubble-mound structure that was proposed for the extension of the North breakwater of the Port of Leixões, Portugal. The hybrid concept combines the overtopping and the oscillating water column principles and was tested on a geometric scale of 1/50. This paper is focused on the assessment of the effects of the hybrid WEC integration on the case-study breakwater, both in terms of its stability and functionality. The 2D physical model included the reproduction of the seabed bathymetry in front of the breakwater and the generation of a wide range of irregular sea states, including extreme wave conditions. The experimental results shown that the integration of the hybrid WEC in the breakwater does not worsens the stability of its toe berm blocks and reduces the magnitude of the overtopping events. The conclusions obtained are therefore favorable to the integration of this type of devices on harbor breakwaters.
Highlights
The capability of wave energy to compete with alternative energy sources, whether renewable or not, remains a key challenge that must be overcome
There is a significant potential resource, with some estimates pointing towards a yearly averaged power of 2.1 TW [5], only a somewhat small percentage of it can be harnessed by Wave Energy Converters (WECs)
The other advantages are the nearby availability of grid connections and the absence of the typical issues associated to offshore installation of WECs and their maintenance [12,13]
Summary
The hybrid WEC module developed consists in the combination of an OWC and an OWEC. The OWEC consists of a number of reservoirs one over each other (above the mean water level), which store temporarily the overtopped water of incident waves. The action of waves forces the column to act like a piston, moving up and down, forcing the air out of the chamber and back into it again. This continuous bidirectional stream of high-velocity air passes through a turbine that converts it into energy [19,20,30]. The OWC device was designed and its resonance frequency adjusted with the assistance of the CFD code ANSYS Fluent [32]
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