• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.908-914
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• 2008

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.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.5-11
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• 2014

Small hydro power, among other renewable energy resources, has been evaluated to have enough development value because it is a clean, renewable and abundant energy resource. In addition, small hydro power has the advantage of low cost development by using existing facilities like sewage treatment plants, water works and similar resources. But in the case of small hydro power systems, there are problems with degraded operation efficiency of turbine due to changes in flow rates. In order to overcome this, variable speed control can be achieved by using the power rectifier and permanent magnetic synchronous generator(PMSG) as a possible method to respond to the changes in flow rates. In this study, a commercial ANSYS CFD code was used to analyze the performance of 10kW class propeller hydro turbine and to also investigate flow characteristics at variable flow rates and runner vane.