Ocean Industries


Ocean Industries knows that seas and oceans cover over two thirds of the earth's surface, offering huge potential for generating energy. At sea, there are abundant sources of renewable energy such as wind, wave, thermal and tidal energy. The seas offer huge opportunities for meeting the world's growing energy demand in a sustainable way.


The world has come to the point where it needs more energy than ever before as energy demand grows rapidly on global scale. Not only does the world need energy, but it also needs energy gained from renewable and ecologically acceptable fuels that doesn’t cause major ecological problems such as global warming and air pollution. Ocean energy will be one of these new renewable energy sources  and should really play a more significant role in upcoming years.



Thermal Energy

Our oceans are vast, untapped and renewable collectors of heat from the sun. Through Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) technology, 1/10,000ths of the surface of our seas contains enough solar thermal energy to provide for our entire planet’s current energy needs, renewably and sufficient desalinated water for all water uses of a population of 7 billion.


OTEC can produce both power and desalinated water 24 hours a day and uninterrupted all year round. This is unlike most other forms of renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaic, wind and wave energies, which vary in output according to night/day cycles of weather conditions. An OTEC plant can be seen as a combined power plant and desalination plant: For every MW of power generated, 2.36 million litres/day of desalinated water will be created.


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Tidal Energy

Another type of ocean energy is tidal energy since when tides comes into the shore, they can be trapped in reservoirs behind dams. Tidal power is actually a form of hydropower that exploits the movement of water caused by tidal currents or the rise and fall in sea levels.


Tidal energy is produced thanks to the use of tidal energy generators which are large underwater turbines placed in areas with high tidal movements, and designed to capture the kinetic motion of the ebbing and surging of ocean tides in order to produce electricity. Tidal power has enormous potential for future electricity generation because of the massive size of the oceans.

 

The potential of tidal power has been recognized for very long time (small dams were built along oceans since 11th century). However, compared to river dams, tidal-power projects are much more expensive, since massive structures must be built in a difficult saltwater environment.


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Wave Energy

Ocean wave energy is form of the kinetic energy that exists in the moving waves of the ocean since waves are caused by blowing winds over the surface of the ocean. This energy can be used to power a turbine and there are many areas in the world where wind blows with sufficient consistency to provide continues waves. There is tremendous energy in wave power which gives this energy source gigantic energy potential.

 

Wave energy is captured directly from surface waves or from different pressure fluctuations between the surfaces. This energy can then be used to power a turbine and the simple and mostly used working principle of this procedure would be as follows: First the wave raises into a chamber and then the rising water forces the air out of the chamber and the moving air spins a turbine which then turns a generator.


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