Hydrokinetic Power Potential in Spanish Coasts Using a Novel Turbine Design

Abstract

Nowadays, there is great concern about obtaining clean energy. Governments around the world are boosting renewable energy resources. Oceans provide abundant renewable energy resources, including tidal, wave, and current energy. It seems that ocean currents are one of the most promising ways to obtain energy from the oceans. The goal of this paper is to assess the hydrokinetic power potential in three different areas of the Spanish coast using a novel turbine design, named the fin-ring turbine. The patented turbine was previously power tested in 2014 in the Gulf of Mexico and numerically validated in the literature. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the novel current turbine is presented, including mesh sensitivity and turbulence studies. The turbine’s performance represented in TSR-Cp is discussed. The turbine was simulated in different regions with several current speeds, focusing on the Spanish coast. The results are very promising, with upper limit power coefficients of 37.5%, and 36.5% as a lower limit. Also, the comparisons with power test data available in the literature show very satisfactory agreement. The results highlight the superiority of the turbine in lower currents and present the suitability of the turbine’s applicability.

Keywords

• CFD
• hydro turbine
• ocean current
• simulation
• ocean energy