First results of the hydrokinetic modeling in the maroni river

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Mourad Boutouchent, Sylvain Guillou, Enguerran Grandchamp, Xavier Goossens

Friday 3 july 2015

11:15 - 11:30h at Europe 1 (level 0)

Themes: (T) Hydro-environment, (ST) Renewable energy resources

Parallel session: 15G. Environment - Renewable

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A first part from the development of a decision making tool for the assessing of the hydrokinetic potential of tropical rivers near remote villages is done. It is question to analyze the hydrokinetic power's (HKP) sensitivity to the islands' characteristics which is pre-requisite for the full hydraulic modeling of complex rivers to either optimize the mesh model for more accurate results or simplify river geometry for a more flexible computation. Through hydraulic modeling of Maroni river with TELEMAC2D, HKP was found too sensitive to the size, shape and particularly to the position of the islands. Actually, if an island is removed from the model; the higher the size of islands is, respectively the compactness, the higher the loss of the HKP will be. However, the lower the distance between the island and the right bank of the river is, the higher the loss in HKP will be. Finally, simplifying river geometry by removal of small islands is possible but flow velocity should be corrected in rapid flow areas. Keywords: Maroni river, TELEMAC2D, sensitivity analysis, hydrokinetic power ratio.