Reliability, validity and development of ocean thermal energy conversion

With the foreseen future of fossil fuels and other nonrenewable energy, researchers have devoted themselves for potential renewable energy which can be alternatives to the oil-based economy. It is universal acknowledged that ocean thermal is an ideal energy source and ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) was studied. Firstly, the principle of OTEC system was presented and the main structure was analyzed. Then some challenges through its application and commercialization were discussed respect to the key subsystems of OTEC. In addition, fault tree analysis as case study was applied to illustrate the relationships of reliability aspect of OTEC, which may benefit the implantation and stability of future development. Relex studio 2009 was adopted in this paper for fault tree construction.