Abstract
This research discusses in details the wave energy which is an interesting non conventional source of energy that helped us a lot through the years to keep up with the challenge of our time. The research starts with introducing a background of that energy as in who, when and how it was first invented and the gradation that happened in the technologies progress in the past. The objectives of the research are then clarified in the sequence of the research topics. It then starts introducing the modern aspect of wave energy and mentioning its generating methods that are used today and the working mechanism of each one illustrated with figures. It then shows how can we take advantage of wave energy in many different fields and its applications around us and displays the use of wave energy in many countries in a table. It then details how the wave energy can be a double edged sword by mentioning the pros and cons of using and relaying on this energy and how it can affect our present and future both in a good and bad ways. In conclusion, the research enlightens the reader of the importance of studying and developing the wave power stations and more and gives ideas of how the governments and people can work together to overcome the challenges they face related to the use of wave energy.
Introduction
The term energy means an amount of power that can perform work and can be turned from one form to another. Through generations and generations, humans have always been trying to work on that power and take advantage of every source possible to generate energy.One of these sources that humans discovered is not other than the largest areas on their planet : the water, which can generate a form of energy called wave energy that occurs from the movements of water’s waves. Energy of waves is known to be a renewable type of energy which means it can be generated again and again without running out because water sources on earth are known to be infinite which gives this energy another names related to this like water energy. It is also called ocean energy because the wide oceans are the mostly used sources for the generation process which consists of converting the mechanical energy of the moving water to another energy form like electric energy or to perform another useful process like pumping water and desalinating of salt water.
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The first known human experiment with wave energy was in Paris in 1799 when inventor Girard and his son managed to capture the energy of waves. Since its first discovery, scientists and other specialists have tried to invent an effective way or device that can capture a good amount of wave energy until 1910 when Bochaux-Praceique achieved successes in making a device that captures wave energy using a water column that can move back and forth and got to power his house with it. after that the energy wave was adopted more by scientists and many pursuits of developing the process of generating it have been made like Yoshio Masuda’s practical tests in 1940 with ideas like making use of the power that comes from the motion of an articulated raft in many angles in water to generate energy.
The more the world comes to a realization to the fact that relaying on non renewable sources of energy will cause a lot of problems and energy shortage in the future the more they put more attention on experimenting on wave energy, which led researchers from many universities like Norway,The United States Of America, Edinburgh and many others to do so and achieve an invention in 1974 made specially by Stephen Salter called Edinburgh Duck and its concept is moving the duck shaped device up and down by gyroscope inside of it opposing the direction of waves and then turn this rotation by an electric generator to an electric energy of efficiency of 90%. However, some of these old ways of generating wave energy are not 3 professionally used today as scientists have developed more advanced methods that have both good and bad sides to it that all will be discussed in this research.
Objectives
This research has many objectives that the reader would obtain by the end of reading it. first is learning about the history of wave energy and understanding the first technologies made in the past. Second is realizing how much the wave energy is developed by different people through the years. Third is Finding out how wave energy is generated and discussing the different methods and types of wave power stations. Also connecting the wave energy with the life around us through showing its applications and uses.Not only that but also finding out which countries are more advanced and ahead in different wave energy technologies. Also discussing the advantages and the bright sides of using wave energy as well as giving examples of the dark side and the cons that wave energy can cause. Another objective is discussing the efforts that can be made to develop the wave energy as well as appreciating the efforts of scientists, researchers, engineers and anyone involved in working on the subject.
Wave Energy Today
In the present time, many old ways that have been used in the past to generate wave energy in simple forms are not used professionally today as many more advanced technologies are being developed and used like oscillating water columns, attenuators, point absorber and oscillating wave surge converter. We can see how the wave energy can be beneficial in areas like generating electric energy, pumping water and desalinating salt water. The wave energy good sides also differs as it is a clean renewable energy that is good for our environment, economy and civilization. wave energy power stations also have bad side effects like disturbing the ecosystem of sea creatures, the difficulty in maintaining the ruined parts and preventing ships to move freely.
Wave Energy Generation
Wave energy is mainly generated because of two reasons, the first one is a type of stress that heighten the water called shear stress which is a result of the friction force that occurs between both the waves and the wind that moves the waves. The second reason is the direction opposition of wind with the up and down motion of waves which leads to difference in the air pressure.Beside that the generated energy can also be affected by the characteristics of the water waves in the process as the amount and efficiency of the energy generated depends on the wave length,speed and height and which all are preferred to be high to due to their directly proportional relationship with the efficiency of the energy generated. It also depends on the level of water so since the wind have bigger effect on the water surface than the water floor,the wave energy can be represented by an exponential curve as it is reduced gradually as we go deeper in the water. After studying the many aspects and properties of the waves and taking into consideration the distance between the water and land and the engineering designs, many wave power stations were built with different generation methods, some of these methods are the next four :
Oscillating Water Columns :
This device shown is not fully submerged in water and it consists of a column of air on top of a column of water. As the waves fill and empty the water column the water pushes the air in the topping air column and the air compresses a piston connected to a number of turbine fans that does not depend on the direction of air movement. the motion of turbines then lead to the operating of an electric generator connected to it.
Attenuators:
This technology shown in figure 2 consists of a number of devices connected together with about 30 meters distance from each other that float on the water surface in a snake-like shape fixed in parallel with waves. As the waves move up and down the devices move forth eventually pushing hydraulic pumps that pass that kinetic energy to a fixed electric generator that transfers the electricity to the shore through underwater cables.
This device shown floats on the water like a buoyant about 3 Kilometers away from the coast. It is called absorber because it absorbs the kinetic energy that occurs from the motion of the top part of the device and the waves around it and then use pistons or magnetic induction motors placed inside of it to pass the absorbed energy through hydraulic pumps which pumps the energy into underwater cables.
Generating Electric Energy:
The most common application of ocean energy is producing mostly big amounts of electricity reaching to a measure of Terawatt per hour yearly in wave power stations around the world. The first wave power station was made in 2008 in Portugal producing 2.25 Mega Watt per hour a year and it is called Agucadoura wave farm. That station was a revolution in the energy generating field and it was followed by many others with different capacity ranges and generation methods shown in table 1 that displays information about different station in some countries.
Desalination
Desalination is the process of turning the salt water into a drinkable water. This process needs a big amount of energy which led some companies to connect it with wave energy to fill that need. One of these technologies is CETO which is a wave energy unit that produces both electric energy and desalinated water using the process of reverse osmosis, a process in which the water is subjected to external pressure to reverse the ordinary osmosis and get rid of the unwanted particles and ions in the salt water. This technology was first installed in the sea floor in 2015 in Australia and fulfilled its purpose successfully.
Pumping Water
Wave energy technologies also participates in pumping water to be stored in containers or to be used in other uses like generating energy with hydraulic turbines. Searaser is a device that operates with that technology and it consists of a surface buoy, a sea floor buoy and a piston between them. As both buoys move up and down by the motion of waves, the piston pumps the water into a 8 pipe which transfers the water to the required place which is mostly a higher place near the shore. Searaser was first practically tested in the United Kingdom in 2009 by its inventor Alvin Smith and it earned the votes of the British Library’s “Top 15 inventions of the decade”.
Advantages Of Wave Energy.
Through the years the ocean energy has proved its reliability and showed its many benefits.It became very useful due to the world’s desperate need to renewable sources of energy as the countries are gradually changing their reliability on soon to run out sources of energy like fossil fuels. It also helps in making up for the sudden or stable shortfalls of these non renewable energy sources. Not only that, but it also participates in reducing pollution and environmental damaging as it is a clean source and its produced electricity can be used directly without additional harming process which all can help in solving the increasing problem of climate change and global warming. Wave energy power stations are also very beneficial in the economic aspect as they do not cost a lot of money to be installed and operated and they do not hinder the urban progression as they do not harm the land or the residential areas. They are also one of the most suitable energy sources to use as a lot of big cities are built on shore so the energy generated from water would cover their needs well. Wave energy also varies in technology and devices so that makes it easier for us to harness.
Disadvatges Of Wave Energy
Although wave energy can be very useful, there is always another face for the coin as it proved to have many cons that should not be ignored. One of its biggest cons is disturbing and endangering the sea creatures which effects the stability of their ecosystem. Wave energy can also be unpredictable and random sometimes as it depends on the weather so any storms or changes in the wave properties can affect the process. The periodic maintenance and fixing the ruin parts can also be very hard as some of these parts are installed very deeply and 9 it is hard to reach them. Although it is useful to the coastal areas, they are not suitable for the non coastal ones as it would be expensive to transfer the energy to them. Wave energy can also make sea transportation and trading harder as it can hinder the movements of ships and fishing boats. It also can affect ports, sewers and army operations that occurs in the sea.
Conclusion
After capturing the many aspects of wave energy, we come to a conclusion that although we have come very far in operating the different types of wave power stations and developing them, we still have many challenges concerning this source of energy that scientists and engineers are researching and working hard to overcome. However, that does not take from the fact that wave energy is the energy of the future and that we should start using it more and more and put more attention into developing power stations that have high efficiency with low bad side effects.We can also notice that The governments play a big role in harnessing this energy so, they should pay more attention to individual ideas,researches and studies and give the people involves a chance and platform to discuss their ideas and practice them practically. The governments also should encourage more people to work in wave energy and should adopt the small projects and help them financially. People from all around the world should also work hand in hand with the governments by spreading reliable and scientific information about wave energy to gain the public’s interest to study more about the subject and developing it. We also should stay away from the sea places we are not allowed to be around and never disturb the workers or harm any part of power stations.
References
- James Bow, The Science Of Hydro and Wave Energy, Reference Point Press,2018
- Eugen Rusu and Florin Onea, A review of the technologies for wave energy extraction,academic.oup, 2018,, Vol.2, p.*10-17*.
- Tunde Aderinto & Hua Li,Review On Power Performance and Efficiency of Wave Energy Converters, MDPI, 2019,p.*6-12*.
- Jennifer Leijon& Cecilia Bostrom,Fresh water production from the motion of ocean waves,ELSEVIER,2018, Vol.435, p.*161-171*.
- Aliakbar Babajani, Mohammad Jafari, Parinaz Hafezisefat, Mojtaba Mirhosseini, Alireza Rezania, Lasse Rosendahl,Parametric study of a wave energy converter (Searaser) for Caspian Sea, International Scientific Conference “Environmental and Climate Technologies”,2018.
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