Harnessing the Energy in Waves to Generate Electricity

Overview

Having one of the highest sources of renewable energy densities, ocean waves are one of the most reliable ways to provide clean power. This research paper investigates a small-scale wave converter. With Faraday’s law of induction in mind, the oscillating water levels can be used to move a magnet in and out of a coil without any manual labor being done. The device was deployed in a fabricated wave tank using basic construction tools. The variables tested were coil diameter, wave amplitude, the number of coil turns, and the number of magnets. It was found that out of three coil diameters of 14, 16, and 25 mm, the largest produced the most voltage and current of 10.6 mV and 6.1 mA. A higher wave amplitude was also discovered to increase the energy produced across 10 observations with different wave amplitudes in a linear trend. Building on the coil diameter experiments, the 25 mm coil was taken and the number of coil turns were increased in increments of 50. The averages were graphed to see a linear relationship with the 250-turn coil producing 61.3 mV and 43.6 mA. Taking the 25 mm coil diameter with 250 turns, the number of magnets were changed using magnetic disks connected in increments of 10. After graphing the averages, a linear relationship was found with the 40-magnet contraption producing 92.6 mV and 61.0 mA. These discoveries are analyzed in which improvements are suggested for future experiments.

Competition history

• JSHS 2022 Category not listed

Resources

• National JSHS abstract book ↗

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