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Several power take-off (PTO) architectures for wave-powered reverse osmosis (RO) desalination of seawater are introduced and compared based on the annual average freshwater production and the size of the components, which strongly relate to the costs of the system. The set of architectures compared includes a novel series-type PTO architecture not previously considered. These seawater hydraulic PTO architectures are composed of a WEC-driven pump, an RO module, an intake charge pump driven by an electric motor, and a hydraulic motor driving an electric generator for electric power production. This study is performed using an efficient two-way coupled steady-state model for the average performance of the system in a given sea state, including freshwater permeate production, electric power production, and electric power consumption. A multi-objective design problem is formulated for the purposes of this comparative study, with the objectives of maximizing annual freshwater production, minimizing the displacement of the WEC-driven pump, and minimizing the installed RO membrane area. This establishes a framework for comparison in the absence of a mature techno-economic model. The requirement that the system produces enough electric power to meet its consumption is applied as a constraint on the operation of the system. The oscillating wave surge converter Oyster 1 is assumed as the WEC. Weights on performance of the system in a given sea state are based on historical data from Humboldt Bay, CA. This study finds that (1) architectures in a series configuration allow for a reduction in the WEC-driven pump size of 59–92% compared to prior work, (2) varying the displacement of the WEC-driven pump between sea conditions does not provide any significant advantage in performance, and (3) varying the active RO membrane area between sea condition offers improvements between 7% and 41% in each design objective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work comparing power take-off (PTO) architectures for ocean wave-powered reverse osmosis suggests that variable displacement in the wave energy converter (WEC)-driven pump does not offer a significant performance advantage. A limitation of that study is that the WEC was subject to a constant load within a given sea state ("Coulomb damping") and did not account for controlled, moment-to-moment variation of the PTO load enabled by a variable displacement pump. This study explores the potential performance advantage of a variable PTO load over Coulomb damping. Model predictive control is used to provide optimal load control with constraints on the PTO load. The constraints include minimum and maximum loads and a limit on the rate of load adjustment. Parameter studies on these constraints enable conclusions about PTO design requirements in addition to providing an estimated performance advantage over Coulomb damping. Numerical simulation of the Oyster 1 WEC is carried out with performance weighted by historical sea state data from Humboldt Bay, CA. The results show a performance advantage of up to 20% higher yearly-average power absorption over Coulomb damping. Additionally, the parameter studies suggest that the PTO load should be adjustable down to at least 25% of the maximum load and should be adjustable between the minimum and maximum loads within a few seconds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

McKibben actuators, comprised of an elastomeric tube wrapped in inextensible fibers, were developed in the 1950s and have been used primarily in pneumatic applications. Mc-Kibben actuators provide superior force and power density at a lower cost compared to many conventional actuators due to their simple design. This paper explores driving McKibben actuators with high-pressure hydraulics and reflects on some challenges associated with modeling the actuators at hydraulic pressures. Twelve actuators were designed, fabricated, and tested experimentally over a range of contraction ratios. Four modeling approaches were evaluated against experimental data including a new model that eliminates some of the limitations of existing models by predicting output force as a function of initial actuator geometry only and capturing the nonlinear variation in elastomer wall thickness as the actuator is strained. The experimental results suggest that the existing McKibben force models presented in this paper are not as accurate as the new model for tracking total axial force generation. The absolute value of the error from experimental values of each of the four models ranged from 9.1% for the new model developed in this paper to 9.9%, 10.0%, and 10.5% for the three other existing approaches, but the new model has unique advantages in modeling hydraulic McKibben actuators that require thicker tube walls. This study lays the ground work for future research in modeling soft robots comprised of compliant actuators powered hydraulically at high pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Hydraulic accumulators are used in a variety of applications to minimize the pressure variation in hydraulic circuits and to store energy. Conventional hydraulic accumulators suffer from two major limitations, the hydraulic system pressure varies with the quantity of energy stored and the energy density is significantly lower than other energy domains. In this paper, a novel hydraulic accumulator is presented that uses a piston with an area that varies with stroke to maintain a constant hydraulic system pressure while the gas pressure changes. The variable area piston is sealed with a fabric reinforced rolling diaphragm. In this work, the piston radius profile is developed as a function of the piston displacement and then transformed into a function of the axial contact location between the piston and the diaphragm. The piston profile was solved numerically for a variety of conditions using both transformation methods to illustrate the geometric design trade-offs. Using a variable area gas piston with a fixed cylinder area, the maximum gas volume ratio was 1.8:1. An analysis of the energy density revealed that the constant pressure accumulator provides a 16% improvement in energy density over a conventional accumulator at a volume ratio of 2.71:1 and also exceeds the maximum energy density of a conventional accumulator at the lower volume ratio of 1.8:1. This new promising technology maintains a constant hydraulic system pressure independent of the quantity of energy stored, easing system control and allowing other circuit components to be downsized to meet the same power requirements, while also increases the energy storage density. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A liquid piston concept is proposed to improve the efficiency of gas compression and expansion. Because a liquid can conform to an irregular chamber volume, the surface area to volume ratio in the gas chamber can be maximized using a liquid piston. This creates near-isothermal operation, which minimizes energy lost to heat generation. A liquid piston eliminates gas leakage and replaces sliding seal friction with viscous friction. The liquid can also be used as a medium to carry heat into and out of the compression chamber. A simulation is presented of the heat transfer and frictional forces for a reciprocating piston and a liquid piston. In the application of an air compressor, with a pressure ratio of 9.5:1 and a cycle frequency of 20Hz, the liquid piston decreased the energy consumption by 19% over the reciprocating piston. The liquid piston and the reciprocating piston exhibited a total efficiency of 83% and 70% respectively. The liquid piston demonstrated significant improvements in the total compression efficiency in comparison to a conventional reciprocating piston. This gain in efficiency was accomplished through increasing the heat transfer during the gas compression by increasing the surface area to volume ratio in the compression chamber. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A novel method of continuous microbubble generation is proposed in which an air–water mixture is pressurized in a chamber (up to 47 a t m), leading to complete gas dissolution, before being expelled through a restriction to induce bubble nucleation. This approach differs from existing methods for small-scale bubble generation due to the high pressure gas–liquid mixture, nucleation approach, and large gas concentrations, which range from saturation ratios of 2.85 to 9.56 at normal temperature and pressure. The flow of bubbles produced by the system is characterized through optical microscopy to determine the influence of various operating parameters on the volumetric bubble size distributions (VBSDs) at a fixed flow rate. In particular, the gas concentration, compressor pressure, restriction diameter, and restriction length are varied for two classes of restrictions: capillaries with large length-to-diameter ratios, and orifices with comparatively low ratios. VBSDs are modestly polydisperse under all conditions, but with tunable distributions in the 10–70 μ m diameter range. The VBSDs for each configuration collapse when non-dimensionalized by the Sauter mean diameter, which provides an opportunity to describe bubble size distributions using a predictor model for this reduced order quantity. The coefficients from the predictor model reveal a low sensitivity of the Sauter mean diameter to the gas concentration and a reduction of bubble diameters when the residence time of solution in the restriction is decreased. Analysis of the technique of bubble generation yields an energy balance to quantify the relative energy ratio of the bubble generation process, which is presently less than 0.2%. Insight from the energy balance suggests that the process could be optimized to generate smaller bubbles. [Display omitted] • Novel microbubble generation method using high pressure (> 45 atm) and induced cavitation. • Residence time of fluid through a restriction correlates to bubble size. • Energy balance of bubble generation method provides guidance to optimize the process to reduce bubble sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high pressure, efficient and power dense air compressor/expander is a critical element in an isothermal compressed air energy storage (ICAES) system. Heat transfer is often the limiting factor in realizing efficient and power dense compression and expansion processes. Liquid piston compressor/expanders with porous media inserts have been proposed, in which the porous media serves as heat exchangers. While this concept has been studied through modeling and simulation, it has only been validated experimentally at low pressures (10 bar). This paper studies experimentally the effect of porous media in a high pressure (7–210 bar) liquid piston air compressor/expander, which is the proposed pressure for the ICAES system. Cases with the porous media uniformly distributed and non-uniformly distributed in the chamber are studied with various compression and expansion rates. Results show that at 93% efficiency, the uniformly distributed 2.5 mm interrupted plate porous medium increases power density by 10 times in compression and 20 times in expansion; or at the same power, efficiency is increased by 13% in compression and 23% in expansion. Moreover, the porous medium, if deployed at the top of the chamber, is shown to be more effective than if deployed at the bottom. The results indicate that the added surface area provides the dominant benefits but the porous media also increase the heat transfer coefficient at the same efficiency regime. These results are consistent with and extend the findings from previous low pressure experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficiency and power density of gas compression and expansion are strongly dependent on heat transfer during the process. Since porous media inserts can significantly increase heat transfer surface area, their addition to a liquid piston compressor/expander has been hypothesized to reduce the time to complete the compression or expansion process and hence the power density for a given thermodynamic efficiency; or to increase the thermodynamic efficiency at a fixed power density. This paper presents an experimental investigation on heat transfer with porous inserts during compression for a pressure ratio of 10 and during expansion for a pressure ratio of 6. A baseline case without inserts and five cases with different porous inserts are tested in a compression experiment: 3 interrupted ABS inserts with plate spacing of 2.5, 5, and 10 mm and 2 aluminum foam inserts sized with 10 and 40 pores per inch. The 2.5 mm and 5 mm interrupted plate inserts were also tested in expansion experiments. Porous inserts are found, in compression, to increase power-density by 39-fold at 95% efficiency and to increase efficiency by 18% at 100 kW / m 3 power density; in expansion, power density is increased three fold at 89% efficiency, and efficiency is increased by 7% at 150 kW / m 3 . Surface area increase is found to be the predominant cause in the improvement in performance. Thus, a liquid piston compressor/expander together with a porous medium may be used in applications requiring high compression ratios, high efficiencies, and high power density such as in an open-accumulator compressed air energy storage (CAES) system or a compressor for compressed natural gas (CNG). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]