Vortex Hydro Energy, Inc
2512 Carpenter Road, Suite 201-B1, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States

Vortex Hydro Energy has exclusive license to commercialize a University of Michigan patented, hydrokinetic power generating device, the VIVACE converter, which harnesses hydrokinetic energy of river and ocean currents. This converter is unlike water turbines as it does not use propellers. VIVACE uses the physical phenomenon of vortex induced vibration in which water current flows around cylinders inducing transverse motion. The energy contained in the movement of the cylinder is then converted to electricity.  The VIVACE converter is a transformational technology. It taps into a vast new source of clean and renewable energy, that of water currents as slow as 2 to 4 knots previously off limits to conventional turbine technology that target rivers with water currents greater than 4 knots. The vast majority of river/ocean currents in the United States are slower than 3 knots.

The Device

In 2005, Professor Michael Bernitsas, of the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, turned his research 180 degrees from what he and others had been working toward. He looked for ways to maximize the effects VIV and control its power rather than suppress its effects. His work resulted in the development of a device that is capable of harnessing the destructive power of VIV in a controllable manner, resulting in generation of clean and renewable electric power in an environmentally compatible way. VIVACE can be placed in a river or ocean current to extract energy from moving water. This converter is unlike any existing technology, as it does not use turbines, propellers, or dams.

How it Works

Past research and development has resulted in the development of a device that is capable of harnessing this natural power of VIV in a controllable manner, resulting in generation of clean and renewable electric power in an environmentally compatible way. VIVACE can be placed in a river or ocean current to extract energy from moving water. This converter is unlike any existing technology, as it does not use turbines, propellers, or dams. VIVACE converts the horizontal hydrokinetic energy of currents into cylinder mechanical energy. The latter is then converted to electricity through electric power generators. Cylinder oscillations are rather slow – about a cycle/sec – creating no direct physical threat to fish.  Vortex Induced Vibration (VIV) is an extensively studied phenomenon where vortices are formed and shed on the downstream side of bluff bodies (rounded objects) in a fluid current. The vortex shedding alternates from one side of a body to the other, thereby creating a pressure imbalance resulting in an oscillatory lift.