Jospa Blog

 Question

Gerard Labadie

To: <info@jospa.ie>

Subject: News about the irish tube compressor

Hello
I run a modest website about wave energy, algae and so.
http://hydro.blogiwi.com/
I would like to know if you have some plans about testing a prototype
soon, or what is the next stage.
I plan to do an article about the Irish Tube Compressor.
Regards
Gérard

Response

Thank you very much for your interest in the ‘ITC’.

The animation on our website www.jospa.ie indicates a bellows (soufflet - amazingly close to soufflé!!) feeding the alternate slugs or portions of air and water to the tubes. We never seriously thought we would do it that way but it’s an easy way to explain it in an animation.

In fact as you will know if you have read our blog section we have tried Oscillating Water Column (OWC) and inputs from solenoids (électrovannes). Working with 50mm inside diametre  tube we were afraid our dimensions might lie outside of the working area of the invention (e.g. there might be too much energy lost due to turbulence compared to the diametre) but this was not the case.

So our immediate priority is to return to air and water in-feed tests with the small diametre tube. For this we shall try other methods of feeding but may reconsider the OWC as well. Presuming we get something working there we shall take basic measurements of pressure etc. At the same time we plan to perform more tests with the revolving drum and very much longer tube. Between these two types of test we hope to get (1) air/water feeding system developed and (2) initial operational parameters established.

Then we move to larger diametre tube, first in a tank - probably looking for a longer tank than we have used so far - as long as possible! Remember that we use a tube as does Anaconda: we are both “attenuator” technologies (’atténuateur) whereas most of the wave technologies are so-called ‘point’ technologies - but our technologies are completely different from then on. For the Anaconda the tube must distort with pressure to form the ‘bulge wave’. In our case we will go to great lengths to AVOID distortion that would absorb some of the energy we want to harvest - so we plan to use ‘hoop strength’ reinforcement (renforcement de la circle) and also longitudinal reinforcement (le long de la tube). To permit the tube to flex (fléchir) with the waves this longitudinal reinforcement will lie along the neutral axis (only) so it will not affect flexing.

Eventually at sea we hope to work with tube diametres of up to 1000-1200mm and lengths of up to 500m to get serious power.