Energy harvesting devices for subsea sensors

Subsea engineering has become a thriving field that received a lot of attention from researchers and educators in recent years. The reason for the attention could be economical since many oil and gas fields are offshores, ecological due to pollution, or geological due to earthquakes and Tsunamis. The subsea environment is difficult to conquer and requires sophisticated tools to monitor such as Autonomous or Remote Underwater Vehicles (AUVs or ROVs), submersible sensors, and very skilled manpower. In this work, the focus is on how to supply power indefinitely to stationary sensors at the bottom of the sea. Therefore, an energy harvesting device is designed and simulated to validate its efficacy in supplying the necessary power to charge submersible sensors and their accessories. The device is actuated using water currents and the output voltage is fed through a voltage rectifier to convert it to the required DC input of the sensors. Simulations results showed that the designed device can successfully provide the necessary power for submersible sensors. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.