ECO-Auger - Micro Hydrokinetic Energy Converter
The ECO-Auger® is a micro hydrokinetic energy converter, which generates renewable electric energy from moving water in rivers and tidal ocean inlets. ECO-Auger’s unique design – which incorporates a tapered, double helical, flanged auger, coupled with hydraulic circuits – captures energy from river currents, tidal flows, and outflows from existing dams. The ECO-Auger is environmentally friendly, and allows fish and other marine life to pass through unhurt. It also generates its electricity abovewater, leaving whales and sonar systems unaffected, and is designed to operate in all water environments. Support products include the ECO-Waka, a pontoon boat for deploying and anchoring the ECO-Auger, and the Deployment Swing System (DSS), a device to raise and lower the ECO-Auger for cleaning and maintenance.
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How Does it Work?
The ECO-Auger is driven by moving water, which forces the device to rotate. This rotation is directly coupled to a high-pressure hydraulic pump located in the device’s nose cone (See below). The nose cone, which is tethered to bridges or anchored in moving water, stabilizes the torque generated from the rotation and transfers it to the hydraulic pump. The pump supplies variable volumes of environmentally-safe fluid, at set controlled high pressure, regardless of the direction or speed of rotations. This pressure feeds an oil-driven electric generator that delivers constant electrical current through a VRS (Voltage Regulation System).
Constant power generation is achieved through the ECO-Auger’s unique hydraulic pump. As the ECO-Auger rotates, the high-pressure oil flows through check valves that are connected directly in line to the oil motor driving the electric generator.
Key Benefits
The ECO-Auger costs approximately one tenth that of most hydro-based systems, allowing for a return on investment in as little as nine months.
ECO-Auger’s relatively small size makes it a viable option for thousands of locations around the world, where the generation of electricity is currently not feasible, or is achieved with highly-polluting diesel generators. This small footprint also allows for easy placement of the ECO-Auger, at bridges, existing dams, and in waters just one third the depth required by other water-based systems. The ECO-Auger is designed to operate in all water environments.
Because ECO-Auger is deployed at the water’s surface – not anchored to the bottom – its servicing is easy and inexpensive. The system includes a special pontoon boat and hoisting mechanism, which provides straightforward access for any cleaning or maintenance.
The ECO-Auger is environmentally friendly: Its special lubricating oils are biodegradable, and its bladeless design, with tapered helical leads on each end rather than sharp edges, means it will not impact marine life. Its unique hydraulic transfer system keeps ECO-Auger’s electrical parts above the surface, allowing it to generate its electricity out of the water, leaving whales and sonar systems unaffected.
The ECO-Auger’s hydraulic accumulator storage system assures constant energy output and evens out the normal tidal cyclic variations, and its bi-directional design allows it to generate power from water currents in either direction, making it especially efficient.
Applications
Even in the year 2013, nearly one-and-a-half billion people do not have access to electricity. Three billion people – almost half of the world’s population – rely on biomass, such as wood, charcoal, and dung, for cooking and heating purposes. These people are living in energy poverty, the ramifications of which extend far beyond heating and cooking. Children (usually young girls) have to spend hours collecting firewood to heat their homes and cook, which prevents them from going to school.
Energy poverty is one of the least-discussed aspects of our current energy challenge, yet it poses serious threats to economies, national security, the environment, and public health throughout the world.
Such energy-poor communities often migrate towards flowing water to sustain life, making the market potential of the ECO-Auger®immense. The ECO-Auger can be easily installed and maintained in flowing water with very little skill. Unlike solar and wind energy, it will provide clean, constant,predictableelectricity wherever there is moving water.
EAI will focus on multiple markets, using different strategies for each. The first is the emerging energy-poor markets: Africa, India, South America, and Asia. Funding for clean energy projects in such areas are getting more attention globally. The next market, and likely the largest, would be more developed countries and communities with a limited infrastructure grid, which use diesel fuel generators to support industry and residences. Alaska, New Zealand, New Guinea, British Columbia, all of the islands in the Bahamas, and remote areas of the United States are examples of this. The return on investment, along with the concern to protect fish and other marine wildlife, leads us to invest in this market as the primary target. The last market is the high-end European and American areas. Both are rich with low-cost energy, yet both strive to reduce their carbon footprint. Like solar and wind, our technology may require incentives to increase the return on investment. However, with the desire for green products, and the need for additional energy sources during power outages, our environmentally-friendly design will find a sizable home in the European and American markets.
Additional markets could use the ECO-Auger for irrigation, by outfitting the ECO-Auger with a high-volume, low-pressure water pump. This auger could then pump water onto land – and even uphill – to irrigate crops. This would improve the food supply in many Third World countries.
Contractors building the cellular networks in Brazil have contacted us to explore the possibility of using the ECO-Auger in very remote locations, to power cell towers throughout the Amazon.
We have also been contacted by salmon fisheries in southern Chile, which wish to use the ECO-Auger to supply energy for their salmon farms. Such operations there are currently 100% diesel-powered.
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