Researcher Francisco Huera at Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) in Spain has designed a device that harnesses the energy of water currents from the vibrations that occur when water passes around a
Researcher Francisco Huera at Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) in Spain has designed a device that harnesses the energy of water currents from the vibrations that occur when water passes around a cylinder and creates vortices behind it.
This involves a submerged cylindrical tube hanging from an axis that oscillates like a pendulum when the water current makes it vibrate.
“The beauty of this system is that only the cylinder is in the water; everything else — the shaft, the transmissions and eventually the generator — can be outside,” explains the researcher, who has designed and tested the system in a water channel at the Fluid-Structure Interaction Laboratory of the URV.
Currently, the most efficient way to harness the energy of ocean currents is with axial-flow or cross-flow turbines, the underwater equivalent of wind turbines. These are systems that, theoretically, can achieve efficiencies of more than 50%, but which in practice can only harness up to 25-35% of the energy carried by the fluid in the area occupied by the turbine.
These turbines are complex structures, with many moving underwater components that are exposed to corrosion and the growth of marine organisms and which require costly maintenance. Furthermore, there are still
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