Abstract
The world is facing a serious energy problem which destroying the environment. In addition, fossil fuel such as oil and coal that caused global warming and the environmental problems due to acid rain had been gradually exhausted. To solve this problem that has crisis of energy, it is necessary time and effort for research and development of renewable energy in the future. As alternative energy, small hydropower generation which has output of less or equal to 100kW is attracting considerable attention. This is because of its small, simple, renewable, and large amount of energy resources. By using a small hydropower generator of which main concept is based on using the different water pressure levels in pipe lines, energy which was initially wasted by use reducing of a valve at the end of the pipeline, is collected by turbine in the small hydropower generator. In this study, we investigated the influence of the number of runner vanes on the characteristics of tubular-type hydroturbine.
