A Study of the Movement, Structural Stability, and Electrical Performance for Harvesting Ocean Kinetic Energy Based on IPMC Material

Abstract

The movement of water in the oceans generates a vast store of kinetic energy, which has led to the development of a wide variety of offshore energy harvesters all over the world. In our energy harvester, we used ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMCs) to convert the ocean energy into electricity. This paper presents a simulated model of an IPMC-based electrochemical kinetic energy harvesting system installed in the ocean and produced using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. The simulation processes focused on the movement and structural stability of the system design in the ocean for the protection of the IPMC module against possible damage, which would directly affect the power output. Furthermore, the experimental tests under real marine conditions were also studied to analyze the electrical harvesting performance of the IPMC system. These results showed that the use of IPMC materials has many advantages as they are soft and durable; as a result, they can respond faster to wave parameters such as frequency, amplitude, and wavelength.