An assessment of Florida's ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) resource

VanZwieten, James H.; Rauchenstein, Lynn T.; Lee, Louis

doi:10.1016/j.rser.2016.11.043

Cited by 48 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(35 reference statements)

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“…Additionally, for the same temperature change, Uehara and Ikegami showed a decrease of 44% in the net power output of the OTEC power plant [23]. In their paper, VanZwieten et al showed a decrease of 20% and 16% when the temperature changed from 20.12 • C to 21.72 • C and from 20.12 • C to 21.37 • C, respectively, against a 17% drop in this study when a 1.5 • C change occurred [31]. For a change of 5 • C in the seawater source temperature, the calculated drop in w net,max was 45%.…”

Section: Carnot Cycle Resultssupporting

confidence: 47%

“…For a change of 5 • C in the seawater source temperature, the calculated drop in w net,max was 45%. The difference in the decrease of the net power output with other studies can be explained by the fact that the authors considered water ducting as well as the working fluid circulation pump [17,23,30,31]. Therefore, when the temperature difference decreases, the gross power output greatly decreases, whereas losses due to pumping and pressure drop hardly change.…”

Section: Carnot Cycle Resultsmentioning

confidence: 90%

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OTEC Maximum Net Power Output Using Carnot Cycle and Application to Simplify Heat Exchanger Selection

Fontaine

Yasunaga

Ikegami

2019

Entropy

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Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses the natural thermal gradient in the sea. It has been investigated to make it competitive with conventional power plants, as it has huge potential and can produce energy steadily throughout the year. This has been done mostly by focusing on improving cycle performances or central elements of OTEC, such as heat exchangers. It is difficult to choose a suitable heat exchanger for OTEC with the separate evaluations of the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop that are usually found in the literature. Accordingly, this paper presents a method to evaluate heat exchangers for OTEC. On the basis of finite-time thermodynamics, the maximum net power output for different heat exchangers using both heat transfer performance and pressure drop was assessed and compared. This method was successfully applied to three heat exchangers. The most suitable heat exchanger was found to lead to a maximum net power output 158% higher than the output of the least suitable heat exchanger. For a difference of 3.7% in the net power output, a difference of 22% in the Reynolds numbers was found. Therefore, those numbers also play a significant role in the choice of heat exchangers as they affect the pumping power required for seawater flowing. A sensitivity analysis showed that seawater temperature does not affect the choice of heat exchangers, even though the net power output was found to decrease by up to 10% with every temperature difference drop of 1 °C.

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Section: Carnot Cycle Resultssupporting

confidence: 47%

Section: Carnot Cycle Resultsmentioning

confidence: 90%

OTEC Maximum Net Power Output Using Carnot Cycle and Application to Simplify Heat Exchanger Selection

Fontaine

Yasunaga

Ikegami

2019

Entropy

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“…Generally speaking, ocean thermal energy refers to the heat energy arising from the thermal gradients between the surface and deep seawater. It is commonly considered that ocean thermal energy is a viable energy source when thermal gradients exceed approximately 20°C between surface and deep waters . Benefited from the unique geographical conditions, China has a huge ocean thermal energy reserves.…”

Section: Status Quomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is commonly considered that ocean thermal energy is a viable energy source when thermal gradients exceed approximately 20°C between surface and deep waters. 23 Benefited from the unique geographical conditions, China has a huge ocean thermal energy reserves. It is estimated that the potential installed capacity of ocean thermal energy stored in China's offshore and adjacent sea areas is about 359.5~373 × 10 3 MW.…”

Section: Marine Renewable Energy Endowmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current situation and future projection of marine renewable energy in China

2018

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Summary The rapid development of China's economy cannot be separated from the massive consumption of fossil fuel. However, potential risks such as the extreme shortage of fossil fuel and the resulting environmental problems are becoming more and more prominent. As a substitution for fossil fuel, renewable energy is playing an increasingly important role in the energy structure adjustment. As a special type of renewable energy, marine renewable energy has been paid much attention by China's government and scientific researchers because of its properties such as cleanness, environmental protection and large reserves. Under the background of energy structure adjustment and electricity market reform in China, the marine renewable energy power market has a bright future. Through querying an amount of literature and information, this paper makes a strategic analysis based on the understanding of the resource endowment, the current industrial status, and policy environment. Then, the PEST‐SWOT strategy analysis model was adopted to analyze the internalities (strengths and weaknesses) and the externalities (opportunities and threats) of the factors affecting the development of marine renewable energy power industry. Then, some countermeasures from the four angles of strategic positioning, institutional arrangement, environmental education, and technical support are proposed to address the weaknesses and threats. Through the research, some conclusions and policy proposals are finally put forward to promote the sustainable development of the industry.

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“…There is great interest in the development of highly efficient transfer and conversion systems as well as materials to transfer the energy or convert it into other forms of energy such as electricity. 1,2 Phase change materials (PCMs), possessing the ability to absorb and release energy in the process of changing phase, have drawn a lot of attention due to their high latent heat in applications. [3][4][5][6] One important type is the hydrated salt PCM, which has been a study hotspot in the eld of low temperature due to distinct advantages such as high heat fusion, low price, and high security in energy storage systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%