Recent Progress on Wave Energy Marine Buoys

Abstract

This study aims to introduce and discuss the recent research, development and application of wave energy marine buoys. The topic becomes increasingly appealing after the observation that wave energy technologies have been evolving in the recent decades, yet have not reached convergence. The power supply is usually the bottleneck for marine distributed systems such as buoys. Wave energy technologies are especially useful in this sense, as they can capture and convert the promising “native” renewable energy in the ocean (i.e., wave energy) into electricity. The paper enumerates the recent developments in wave energy capture (e.g., oscillating bodies) and power take-off (e.g., nanogenerators). The study also introduces the typical marine buoys and discusses the applicability of wave energy technologies on them. It is concluded that the wave energy technologies could be implemented as a critical addition to the comprehensive power solution of marine distributed systems. Wave energy buoys are likely to differentiate into “wave energy converter buoys” and “wave-energy-powered buoys”, which is indicated by the ratio of the generated power to the load power.

Recent Progress in Blue Energy Harvesting Based on Triboelectric Nanogenerators

“…While the above research has predominantly focused on using spherical structures in blue energy harvesting devices, the buoy offers an alternative paradigm for applying TENGs in BEH development [18,22]. The buoy structures have been applied in EMG-based BEHs and support wave energy installed capacity [72][73][74].…”

“…The triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), invented by Wang's group in 2012, presents the merits of being lightweight and having a high power density, cost effectiveness, easy fabrication, and versatile material choices [12][13][14][15]. Meanwhile, it has attracted global attention from blue energy harvesting studies [16][17][18]. The TENG is a novel blue energy harvesting technology that shows excellent advantages over the EMG under low-frequency motion (<5 Hz) [19,20].…”

Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Marine Applications: Recent Advances in Energy Harvesting, Monitoring, and Self‐Powered Equipment

“…Therefore, the TENG-based buoy system can actively support fulfilling these specific application requirements. [160] Researchers aimed to develop an intelligent monitoring system for sustainable, continuous, and autonomous operation with higher efficiency and docile mechanism, which supports energy generation from very low frequency with TENG. As a result, Xi et al [161] developed a self-powered, and high-performance multilayered intelligent buoy (SIBS) based on multilayered CS principled TENG technology that could carry out wireless sensing for versatile energy stages for an infinite lifetime (Figure 21e,f).…”

“…Therefore, the TENG‐based buoy system can actively support fulfilling these specific application requirements. [ 160 ]…”

Highly Adaptive Triboelectric‐Electromagnetic Hybrid Nanogenerator for Scavenging Flow Energy and Self‐Powered Marine Wireless Sensing

“…Hybridizing the triboelectric with other techniques, such as electromagnetic, [ 31,32 ] piezoelectric, [ 33 ] and photovoltaic, [ 34 ] has become a possible way to improve the energy harvesting efficiency of the whole system. Among them, the combination of TENG and EMG has become the most desirable method to raise energy scavenging efficiency.…”