Assessment of multi-use offshore platforms: structure classification and design challenges

As the world continues to experience problems including a lack of seafood and high energy demands, this paper provides an assessment for integrated multi-use offshore platforms (MUPs) as a step towards exploiting open seawater in a sustainable way to harvest food and energy. The paper begins with background about MUPs, including information regarding what an MUP is and why it is used. The potential energy technologies that can be involved in an offshore platform are introduced while addressing similar applications all over the world. The paper presents the state of the art of MUP structures on the light of EU-funded programs. An MUP would have a positive impact on various marine activities such as tourism, aquaculture, transport, oil and gas and leisure. However, there are concerns about the negative impact of MUPs on the marine environment and ecosystem. Building an MUP with 100% renewable energy resources is still a challenge because a large storage capacity must be considered with a well-designed control system. However, marine bio-mass would play a vital role in reducing battery size and improving power supply reliability. Direct Current (DC) systems have never been considered for offshore platforms, but they could be a better alternative as a simpler control system that requires with lower costs, has lower distribution losses, and has an increased system efficiency, so studying the feasibility of using DC systems for MUPs is required.