The Dresser-Rand business, the United States, has developed a significantly more efficient turbine, called HydroAir™, for extracting power from wave energy. It promises substantial improvements to power plants operating on the oscillating wave column (OWC) principle, by which waves inside a chamber generate an airflow that drives the turbine.
The HydroAir turbine significantly improves the financial feasibility of wave energy power plants. The turbine is one of the few, if not the only, turbine of its type that operates at up to 75 percent efficiency with a power rating of one megawatt. Earlier similar solutions achieved efficiency levels of around 38 percent.
The engineers developed a housing that extends “funnel-like” from the two sides of the turbine. Inside, guide vanes direct the air toward the turbine’s rotor. The guide vanes on the two sides are oppositely oriented so that the inlet and outlet air always drives the rotor in the same rotational direction.
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