Abstract
Increasing power demands and pollution in developing countries has given rise to a need for finding alternate sustainable energy sources. European and American countries have explored ocean energy for a quite long. Intense research activities have been carried out in these nations post 1990s. Spatial distribution of wave heights is irregular across the world. This local enhancement of wave potential has been utilized by these nations. South Asian countries have a geographical disadvantage in this regard. Low wave height conditions pose a major challenge for utilizing the wave power. This paper focuses upon development of an oscillating water column wave energy convertor which can utilize wave power in low wave height conditions of South Asian countries like India. Self-rectifying turbines have been used for a quite long time. The major reason for switching to self-rectifying turbines from conventional turbines with rectifying systems was their superior performance in high flow rates. As the wave heights are low in South Asian countries, dual turbine topology can be made into use provided an efficient rectifying system is designed. A flap based impulse turbine topology was designed and investigated numerically with commercial codes using RANS equations and k- SST turbulence model. Obtained results were compared with the conventional bidirectional impulse turbines. The proposed system was also analysed under boundary conditions specific to Indian coastline in the present work. It was found that proposed system performs satisfactorily in low wave height conditions.