The wind energy has positioned itself as a most promising sustainable energy. The straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbines (SB-VAWTs), as a common turbine for harvesting wind energy, have broad prospects of development. However, the SB-VAWTs are usually influenced by dynamic stall which can cause the aerodynamic losses and fluctuating load. Therefore, the passive flow control (PFC) technique is appreciated for SB-VAWTs due to its low cost and no additional energy consumption. Current paper presents the review of PFC techniques which have been used or are worth being utilized in SB-VAWTs. Furthermore, based on the validation of computational model, a numerical uniform-parameter-criterion study using TSST turbulence model has been conducted to present the research prospects of some novel PFC techniques for SB-VAWTs, including Gurney flap (GF), dimple-GF, leading-edge airfoil-slat (LEAS), flow-deflecting airfoil (FDA), non-circular gap (NCG). (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.