Seawater transfer to onshore using a paddle type wave energy converter

One of the most important policies of water-scarce countries such as Iran is the desalination of seawater for industrial, agricultural and drinking use. Before desalinating seawater, it needs to be transferred, which is a costly process. In this research, the flap-type wave energy converter was considered to provide the necessary energy to transfer seawater to a desalination plant by merely using wave energy. For this purpose, the effects of wave energy converter parameters (paddle width and height), flow properties (water depth and wave frequency), and the slope of the shore on the performance of the wave energy convertor were investigated in a laboratory study. Although the efficiency naturally increased with increasing width of the flap, it should not exceed a certain limit. In short, with 35% and 71% increase in the width of the flap, the output pressure increased 1.58 and 2.82 times, respectively. An increase of 13% and 27 % in water depth first led to a maximum increase of 3.44 times in water pressure and then led to a decrease of a maximum of 1.68 times. Experiments with the height of the flap also showed that when the rotating flap was non-submerged, the water pressure of the device was at least 2.05 times higher than that in its submerged state. For the slope of the shore, with 63% increase in slope (from 1: 5 slope to 1: 3 slope), the pressure increased by 47.25%, and when the slope was increased five times (from 1: 5 slope to vertical slope), the pressure increased by 2.14 times.  For the period of the wave, with a 15% increase in the period, the pressure decreased by 17.02%, and for a 25% increase in the period, the pressure decreased by 81.58%. In this study, a total of 165 experiments were performed and the flap-type wave energy converter was evaluated as a suitable and low-cost method for transferring seawater to shore.