Integrated tidal marine turbine for power generation with coastal erosion breakwater

Abstract

Malaysia experiences predictable tides year round. Areas with the greatest potential are Terengganu and Sarawak waters with average annual power generation between 2.8kW/m to 8.6kW/m. This condition gives excellent opportunity to explore power generation using tidal energy converters by utilization of stand-alone marine facilities such as breakwater with the tidal stream energy. The tidal energy converter is a device that converts the energy in a flow of fluid into mechanical energy by passing the stream through a system of fixed and moving fan like blades. The power output is dependent on its design characteristics, which covers the turbine specification and the met-ocean environmental condition. Hence, this paper focused on the conceptual design of the integrated marine turbine mounted on wave breakwater known as WABCORE. The proposed marine turbine was installed in the breakwater and the generated energy was estimated based on the performance analysis through Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and ANSYS Fluent Computational Fluid Dynamics (Fluent CFD) simulations. It was found that a maximum power output of 30 Watts could be generated by horizontal-axis axial-flow marine turbine with excellent venturi-effect of piping design that provided significant contribution on power generation.