Preliminary Design and Performance Analysis of Ducted Tidal Turbine

Abstract

Recently, focus has been placed on ocean energy resources because environmental concerns regarding the exploitation of hydrocarbons are increasing. Tidal current power, one of the ocean energy resources, has great potential worldwide due to its high energy density. The flow velocity is the most crucial factor for the power estimation of TCP(Tidal Current Power) system since the kinetic energy of the flow is proportional to the cube of the flow speed. So sufficient inflow speed to generate electricity from the tidal current power is necessary. A duct system can accelerate the flow velocity, which could expand the applicable area of TCP systems to relatively lower velocity sites. The shapes of the inlet and outlet could affect the flow rate inside the duct. To investigate the performance of the duct, various ducts were preliminary designed considering the entire system that is single-point moored TCP system and a series of simulations were carried out using ANSYS-CFX v13.0 CFD software. This study introduces a ducted turbine system that can be moored to a seabed. A performance estimation and comparison of results with conventional tidal converters were summarized in this paper.