UK: Gurit Provides Rotor Blades for ANDRITZ HYDRO HS1000

Gurit, a leading global supplier of composite materials and technical solutions to the wind energy, transportation, tooling, marine markets and other selected application areas congratulates ANDRITZ HYDRO Hammerfest who has successfully achieved supply of power to the grid from their HS1000 device.

The HS1000 device installed in the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), Scotland, utilises all-composite blades, engineered and manufactured by Gurit. The horizontal axis turbine is installed on the seabed, with the rotor blades being driven by tidal currents. A 280° blade pitching system allows optimum rotor blade adjustment, to the direction and speed of the tidal current.

The engineering and manufacture of the 1MW rotor blades represent Gurit’s first pre-commercial scale ocean energy project. Despite considerable experience with ocean energy blades at a smaller scale, plus wind energy blades at a much larger scale, the project provided the structural engineering and composite processing teams with a number of significant challenges. These included developing the ability to laminate and cure an in-part solid carbon spar, utilising SparPregTM material and optimising in-house engineering programs, to better analyse the unique structural features of a tidal blade.

Material selection became a key part of the design process to ensure that the required dry and saturated properties were available at an industrial price point and the resulting internal test program has furthered Gurit’s understanding of the seawater-saturated performance of epoxy composite materials. With the blades now in operation, Gurit will continue to work with ANDRITZ HYDRO Hammerfest to verify the design process, against real-time data that is being recorded by the blade’s instrumentation.

Luke McEwen, Senior Engineer at Gurit comments, “Our previous experience with designing ocean energy, wind energy and other marine structures was vital in understanding and engineering these complex structures. We combined our understanding of wind turbine blades, our broad material portfolio, with the new challenges posed by the tidal marine environment, to develop blades which perform hydro dynamically, withstand the predicted loadings and are economical to manufacture”.

Marcus Royle, Business Development responsible for Ocean Energy at Gurit comments “Power generation from the tides shows great promise as the energy generation is as predictable as the moon rising. We’re delighted to help ANDRITZ HYDRO Hammerfest demonstrate that promise and wish them great success in their next phase of deployment”. 

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Offshore WIND staff, May 29, 2012; Image: Gurit