Abstract
In order to make use of ocean renewable energy, a combination system of a bidirectional impulse turbine and a bidirectional flow collector for tidal current energy conversion is investigated in this paper. It is the advantage that this turbine system does not need an operation of orientation change according to the reversal of regular tidal orientation when fixed on the seabed. The experimental investigations by using both a circulating water tank and a towing tank showed that the turbine power output could be increased by adopting the flow collector proposed in this study. Then the flow collector with a fixed spiral vane named spiral flow collector was investigated by both a circulating water tank test and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. The experimental result of the spiral flow collector showed that the performance improvement was found on the increase of axial velocity in the turbine which contributed to the increase of the turbine power output. The results of CFD analysis showed that 180 deg of the skew angle of the fixed spiral vane was suitable in view of the angular moment at the turbine inlet in this case.