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Oceans are throbbing, which suggests they’re stuffed with power that may be tapped. There are some ways of tapping this power for industrial use, however all are nonetheless within the works. But broadly, the strategies are of three varieties — making use of the up-down motion of the oceans; harnessing underwater currents; and harvesting power from tidal motion.
Of these, the up-down motion of water is the bottom hanging fruit, maybe as a result of it requires the least funding in tools.
The ‘ocean wave energy converter’ that IIT-Madras unveiled final week has been tailor-made for Indian waters. Prof Abdus Samad of IIT-Madras, who has established a Wave Energy and Fluids Engineering Laboratory, tells Quantum that Indian seas are characterised by waves that aren’t tall, however have a excessive variation — they arrive in fast succession. This is a helpful characteristic.
Prof Samad and his workforce examined the small 85 kW machine within the Bay of Bengal, 6 km off the coast of Tuticorin, at a water depth of 20 m. The system mainly consists of a buoy (a hole drum of lower than 1 m diameter and one foot tall), a flat plate, and a ten m rod, known as spar, connecting the plate and the buoy. Notably, the plate doesn’t relaxation on the ocean ground — it simply hovers contained in the water. This makes it deployable wherever, together with in seas with slopy, uneven flooring. Atop the buoy is a rack-and-pinion association — a gear wheel that may run up and down a pair of toothed tips. The wheel is related to a small generator.
As the buoy bobs up and down within the seawater, the underwater plate stays secure. In tandem with the buoy’s motion, the gear wheel runs up and down, and the generator produces electrical energy.
Samad’s workforce needs to construct an even bigger system, with a buoy of 15 m diameter and bigger plate. Samad’s PhD scholar Prashant Kumar, who’s a part of the venture, instructed Quantum that with 20 15-m buoys, you possibly can produce electrical energy for ₹9 a kWhr.
Costs will cut back with scale and different supplies. Samad reckons that Indian seas pack not less than 54 GW of power, of which 40 GW might come from waves.
Desalination
Samad’s workforce is engaged on repurposing the identical machine to supply ingesting water from seawater. After all, reverse osmosis is about pushing saltwater by way of a membrane — ingesting water accumulates on the opposite aspect. When the power for the ‘push’ is offered within the seas, why not use it? The Department of Science and Technology has given IIT-M a grant of ₹1 crore for this function.
Published on December 11, 2022
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