Engineering design study of an innovative hydrokinetic turbine with on shore foundation

Tidal currents are a resource of great potentiality and not yet fully explored. Several efforts have been made to exploit these resources, but the costs associated to the deployment of tidal plants in marine environments are usually too high. The aim of this work is to present a system able to handle with the above mentioned problems, through the development of a particular hydrokinetic turbine design. In previous works, the authors described a basic turbine configuration achieving interesting performances, although some operational inconveniences were detected, reason why those problems have been faced and the solution optimized and redesigned. As a result, a new design of the turbine is proposed, consisting of a double rotor spinning in opposite directions in order to balance the induced mechanical torque. From preliminary evaluations related to the Messina Strait tidal cycles (Punta Pezzo site, RC, Italy), a single 12 m diameter turbine can supply a power of about 500 kW with a peak current speed of 3 m/s and deliver up to 450 MWh/year.