• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Marine Engineers Conference
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• 2011.06a
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• pp.79-79
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• 2011

The oceans are an untapped resource, capable of making a major contribution to our future energy needs. In the search for a non polluting renewable energy source, there is a push to find an economical way to harness energy from the ocean. Tidal stream is one of ocean energy form that is being investigated as potential source for power generation. Tidal current turbines are therefore designed as conversion machinery to generate power from tidal currents. A study on energy extraction from tidal currents is presented in this paper.

• Vacuum Magazine
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.11-16
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• 2016

Tidal current energy is the most interesting renewable resources that have been less harnessed. Korea has globally outstanding tidal current energy resources and it is highly needed to develop a tidal current energy conversion system. It is reported that the total amount of available tidal current energy is approximately 6GW in Korea. A good tidal site candidate is required a large amount of fast moving water, bathymetry and seabed properties, no conflicts with other users and is close to a load and grid interconnection. In this review, we summarized the results of R&D projects regarding tidal current resources, utilization projects and demonstration test bed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.85-92
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• 2013

Many efforts will have to be made on securing the stable supply of the energy due to the worldwide trend of controlling the utilization fossil fuels inducing global climate change. Renewable portfolio standard enforced to power companies over 500 MW capacity from 2012. Tidal current energy is one of the most interesting renewable and clean energy resources that have been less exploited. Especially, Korea has worldwide outstanding tidal current energy resources and it is highly required to develop a tidal current energy conversion system(TECS) in coastal region. So, we examine a tidal in-stream energy using a numerical model and estimate a tidal current potential for commercialization of tidal current power plant in the sea of the Bunamgun-do. Available tidal energy resources is also analytically estimated using a tidal farm method and the annual energy production of an optimal TECS arrays will be calculated with taking into account interference of lateral and longitudinal spacing.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.75-82
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• 2011

Marine current energy is one of the most interesting renewable and clean energy resources that have been less exploited. Especially, Korea has worldwide outstanding tidal current energy resources and it is highly required to develop tidal in-stream energy conversion system in coastal area. The objective of study is to investigate harnessing techniques of tidal current energy and to design the a 100 kW horizontal axis tidal turbine using blade element momentum theory with Prandtl's tip loss factor for optimal design procedures. In addition, Influence of Prandtl's tip loss factor at local blade positions as a function of tip speed ratio was studied, and the analysed results showed that power coefficient of designed rotor blade using NACA 63812 was 0.49 at rated tip speed ratio.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Marine Engineers Conference
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• 2012.06a
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• pp.155-156
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• 2012

In the modern age, as man's demand of energy is continuously grew, tidal becomes one of the sustainable energy sources that have been investigating thoroughly recently. Tidal turbine has proved high potential as a future power-generating device. To effectively capture tidal energy on site, a group of tidal turbines should be used and positioned in some formation with proper size and space so that energy can be absorbed from multiple point. Thus, the turbines together with the flow filed becomes a huge domain, a tidal farm. So, it becomes more convenient if a whole turbine farm is simulated by means of actuator discs since the time and cost for analysis can be reduced. This paper aims to evaluate the operating performance (power efficiency and energy restoration rate), mutual influence (for different longitudinal and lateral spaces), the influence of velocity profiles, turbulence intensity and the far wake characteristic of tidal turbines operating in farm formation. The results of this study help contributing to the present development of tidal turbine as the future potential energy conversion machinery.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.126-132
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• 2011

With the worldwide trend of controlling the utilization fossil fuels inducing global climate change, many efforts will have to be made on securing stable supply of the energy due to UNFCCC. Tidal currents are a concentrated form of gravitational energy. Tidal current resource is significant, but limited locations. Technical and economic feasibility demonstration is the next needed step in the technology development process. So, we investigated overview of tidal in-stream energy in the sea near Wando, and then analytically estimated tidal energy resources and annual energy output of TECS arrays.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.61 no.3
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• pp.413-421
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• 2012

This paper proposes the design and implementation of fluid flow generation system by using polypropylene(PP) water capture, which harvests electric energy from the kinetic energy of tidal current or water flow and drives the desired load, and applies it to the discharge drain of Hadong thermal power plant. This experimental system is composed of water captures, driving wheel, gear trains, 10[kW] synchronous generator, and three phase rectifying circuit which drives lamp load for test. The proposed water capturing system which is composed of water captures, rope and driving wheel, rotates as caterpillar according to water flow. This system is very easy to manufacture and more economical than another type of tidal current turbines such as conventional propeller and helical type. Also, we estimated the available fluid flow energy that can be extracted from the cooling water in discharge drain based on drain's cross-sectional area. Therefore, this paper confirms the validity of proposed fluid flow generation system with water captures and the possibility of its application for renewable energy generation in discharge drain of thermal power plant, from the obtained performance characteristic of this energy conversion system.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.47-53
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• 2000

This paper is to propose the concept and performance of a gravity engine which could extract energy from sea or river as a clean. renewable and sustainable power. the vertical motion of the buoyancy cylinder of the present gravity engine is converted to the mechanical work directly without any hydraulic loss. The positive net energy between the imposed and harnessed one is achieved by the specific operating procedure. The detailed derivation of the energy balance is made based on the first principle of thermodynamics. The calculation demonstrates that the present gravity engine could harness more energy than the conventional turbine system in the same basin area because of the relatively high efficiency in the energy conversion system and added mass from the buoyancy cylinder.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.145-152
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• 2012

As the problems of global warming are brought up recently, many skillful solutions for developing new renewable energy are suggested. One of the most remarkable things is ocean energy. Korea has abundant ocean energy resources owing to geographical characteristics surrounded by sea on three sides, thus the technology of commercialization about tidal current power, wave power is demanded. Especially, Tidal energy conversion system is a means of maintaining environment naturally. Tidal current generation is a form to produce electricity by installing rotors, generators to convert a horizontal flow generated by tidal current into rotating movement. According to rotor direction, a tidal current turbine is largely distinguished between horizontal and vertical axis shape. Power capacity depends on the section size crossing a rotor and tidal current speed. We therefore investigated three dimensional flow analysis and performance evaluation using commercial ANSYS-CFX code for an 100 kW class horizontal axis turbine for low water level. Then We also studied three dimensional flow characteristics of a rotating rotor and blade surface streamlines around a rotor. As a result, We found that torque increased with TSR, the maximum torque occurred at TSR 3.77 and torque decreased even though TSR increased. Moreover we could get power coefficient 0.38 at designed flow velocity.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.151-158
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• 2016

Tidal farm is a multi-arrayed turbine system for utilizing tidal stream energy. For horizontal-axis turbine(HAT) system, it is recommended that each unit has to be deployed far apart in order to avoid hydrodynamic interference among turbines, as proposed by the European Marine Energy Centre(EMEC). But there is no rule for the arrangement of vertical-axis turbine(VAT) yet. Moreover it has been reported that a proper arrangement of adjacent turbines can enhance the overall efficiency even greater than an arrangement without mutual interference effect. This paper suggests the layout of VATs showing the better performances, which turned out to be quite different from HATs' arrangement. Numerical calculations were performed to investigate the performance variation in terms of the rotational direction as well as the distance between turbines. It has been shown that the best combination of rotational direction and distance between turbines can increase its performance higher about 9.2% than that of two independently operated turbines. It is likely that such improvement is due to the increased velocity between adjacent turbines. For diagonally arranged turbines, the maximum normalized mean power coefficient was obtained to be higher about 5.6% than that of two independent turbines. It is expected that the present results can be utilized for conceptual design of tidal farm to harness the tidal stream energy.