Ocean Wave Energy Harvesting via Scotch Yoke-based Rotational Generation

Abstract

Harvesting energy from ocean waves has been a
promising renewable energy source due to its high efficiency,
carbon-free, not affected by the depletion of fossil fuels, and
replenished nature. Numerous studies have been conducted on
wave energy to explore an efficient way to harness energy from
wave energy. Among them, linear generators and slider crank
mechanism based rotational generations have become common
topics in research, which have some limitations due to lower
efficiency and technologically challenging. Thus, in this work,
wave energy harvesting technique using rotational generator
based on scotch yoke mechanism is proposed. A typical slider
cranks to convert linear motion into rotational motion is replaced
by scotch yoke mechanism to yield higher efficiency since scotch
yoke is less in terms of weight, length and space. A comparison of
the performance of wave energy system between employing slider
crank and scotch yoke is made to evaluate the superiority of the
proposed mechanism. From the results obtained in this work, it is
found that the output power almost 3.8 W of a rotational
generator employing scotch yoke mechanism is higher compared
to the output power, which is approximately 2 W of rotational
generator employing slider crank for the same input power.
Thus, rotational generator by employing scotch yoke mechanism
can be one of the alternative methods for ocean wave energy
harvesting.