A Belgian company, 3B Fibreglass has taken one of the awards in this year's JEC Innovation Awards Programme for its work on the design of a wave energy converter. The JEC Awards programme, was created in 1998 and rewards the best composites innovations in terms of technical interest, commercial potential, partners, financial impact and originality.

In all there are 8 winners this year and the company's will collect their awards at the JEC Composites Show in Paris at the end of March. 3B Fibreglass has won in the Environment & Energy category for its work on a wave energy converter, with partners Fred Olsen Ltd (Norway), Gent University (Belgium), Spiromatic (Belgium).

According to the judges, the device consists of a floating platform with oscillating buoys on the water surface. Fred Olsen Ltd. decided to work as much as possible with composite materials for the structural parts and for the energy-extracting and power take-off system’s moving parts.

The main challenges for the lifetime and cost/performance properties of this applications are the corrosion resistance (marine environment), the cyclic load fatigue/ageing (blades, moving parts, turbines, etc.), the robustness, impact and resistance to survival load conditions (storms and possible climate changes), the maintenance, and the cost effectiveness of final components, modules and systems. The natural properties of Advantex™ and HiPer-tex™ fibreglass enable and enhance the level of required performance.

3B is reinforcement supplier and advisor within the development team. The next step is to finish defining the materials for the structural parts. The device is a component of the Wave Hub project, which aims to create the UK's first offshore facility to demonstrate and validate the operation of arrays of wave-energy generation devices. The launch is planned for 2010.