• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
• /
• 2005.07a
• /
• pp.690-692
• /
• 2005

Among many other alternative energy resources, small scale hydropower has been brought into attention as a reliable source of energy today, which had been relatively neglected since 1960s. Present low head of Francis turbines and small scale hydro turbines, however, have limitations in the minimum required head and flow rate for efficient operation. This study attempts to develope the Francis turbine which is expected to run efficiently even in very low head and small flow rate, so that the limitations on the conventional small scale hydropower could be alleviated and competition with other alternative energy sources in the changable design conditions could be attained. The Francis turbine of a new concept was designed based on changable design conditions, hydrodynamics and theory of power transmission.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.76-86
• /
• 2019

The cross-flow turbine is a key hydraulic power system that is widely due to low costs, high efficiency, and low maintenance. In particular, the cross-flow turbine considered as the most suitable turbine for low head situations as it is known to operate down to 5 m of water head. However, the conventional cross-flow turbine is unsuitable for ultra-low head situations with less than a 3 m water head. In this study, we propose an inverted-type cross-flow turbine to overcome the limitations of conventional cross-flow turbines under ultra-low head situations. First, we described the limitations of conventional turbines and suggested a new turbine for the ultra-low head circumstances. Second, we investigated the performance of the new turbine using CFD analysis. Results demonstrated the effects of the design parameters, such as number of blades and rotor diameter ratio, on the performance of the suggested turbine. As a result, we developed an inverted-type cross-flow turbine with up to 60% efficiency under low water head conditions.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.39-43
• /
• 2005

Among many other alternative energy resources, small scale hydropower has been brought into attention as a reliable source of energy today, which had been relatively neglected since 1960s. Present low head of Francis turbines and small scale hydroturbines, however, have limitations in the minimum required head and flow rate for efficient operation. This study attempts to develope the Francis turbine which is expected to run efficiently even in very low head and small flow rate, so that the limitations on the conventional small scale hydropower could alleviated and competition with other alternative energy sources in the changable design conditions could attained. The Francis turbine of a new concept was designed based on changable design conditions, hydrodynamics and theory of power transmission. The result of the study shows that two stages runner is more efficient, cheaper in construction, faster responding, and easier maintaining than single stage runner of Francis turbine

• Journal of Power System Engineering
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.105-110
• /
• 2006

Among many other alternative energy resources, small scale hydro power has been brought into attention as a reliable source of energy today, which had been relatively neglected since 1960s. Especially, Kaplan micro-turbine can be applied to various kind of small hydro power plants, such as reservoirs for agriculture purpose, sewage treatment plants and water purification plants. However present low head of Kaplan micro-turbines and small scale hydro turbines, have limitations in the minimum required head and flow rate for efficient operation. This research is to develop modeling analysis for the Kaplan micro-turbine, which can improve economical features of small hydro power plants. The contents and scope of this research are the efficiency improvement of Kaplan micro-turbine.

• New & Renewable Energy
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.116-125
• /
• 2024

Ultra-low-head is an unexplored classification among the sites in which hydroelectric power can be produced. This is typically owing to the low power output and the economic value of the turbines available in this segment. A turbine capable of operating in an ultra-low-head condition without the need of a dam to produce electricity is developed in this study. A gate structure installed at a shallow water channel acting as a weir generates artificial head for the turbine mounted on the gate to produce power. The turbine and generator are designed to be compact and submersible for an efficient and silent operation. The gate angle is adjustable to operate the turbine at varying flow rates. The turbine is designed and tested using computational fluid dynamics tools prior to manufacturing and experimental studies. A parametric study of the runner blade parameters is conducted to obtain the most efficient blade design with minimal hydraulic losses. These parameters include the runner stagger and runner leading edge flow angles. The selected runner design showed improved hydraulic characteristics of the turbine to operate in an ultra-low-head site with minimal losses.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.11-19
• /
• 2015

Recently, the cross flow turbines attract more attention for their good performance over a large operating regime at off design point. This study employs a very low head cross flow turbine, which has open inlet duct and has barely been studied before, to investigate the performance of the cross flow turbine with air suction from the rear part of the runner. Unlike conventional cross flow turbines, a draft tube is attached to the outlet of runner to improve the turbine performance. Water level and pressure in the draft tube are monitored to investigate the influence of air suction. Torque at local blade passage of three parts of runner is examined in detail under the conditions of different air suction. Consequently, it is found that with proper air suction in the runner chamber, the water level in the draft tube gradually drops to Stage 2 of the runner and the efficiency of the turbine can be raised by 10%. Overall, the effect of air-layer on the performance of the turbine is considerable.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.68-79
• /
• 2014

The type of turbine developed is based on the very low head of water potential source for the electric power production. The area of research is focused for the axial water turbine that can be applied at the simple site open channel with has a very low cost and environmental impact compared to the conventional hydro installation. High efficiency of axial turbine which applied to the very low potential head will made this type of turbine can be used at wider potential site. Existing irrigation weir and river area will be the perfect site for this turbine. This paper will compare the effects of the variation of swirl velocity criterion during the design of the blade of guide vane and rotor of the turbine. Effects of the swirl velocity criterion is wider known as a vortex conditions (free vortex, force vortex and swirl velocity constant), and the free vortex is the very popular condition that applied by most of turbine designer, therefore will be interesting to do a comparison against other criterion. ANSYS Fluent will be used for simulation and to determine the predictive performance obtained by each of design criteria.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.30-39
• /
• 2014

The cross flow turbine is economical because of its simple structure. For remote rural region, there are needs for a more simple structure and very low head cross flow turbines. However, in this kind of locations, the water from upstream always flows into the turbine with some other materials such as sand and pebble. These materials will be damage to the runner blade and shorten the turbine lifespan. Therefore, there is a need to develop a new type of cross flow turbine for the remote rural region where there is availability of abundant resources. The new design of the cross flow turbine has an inlet open duct, without guide vane and nozzle to simplify the structure. However, the turbine with inlet open duct and very low head shows relatively low efficiency. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to optimize the shape of the turbine inlet to improve the efficiency, and investigate the internal flow of a very low head cross flow turbine. There are two steps to optimize the turbine inlet shape. Firstly, by changing the turbine open angle along with changing the turbine inlet open duct bottom line (IODBL) location to investigate the internal flow. Secondly, keeping the turbine IODBL location at the maximum efficiency achieved at the first step, and changing the turbine IODBL angle to improve the performance. The result shows that there is a 7.4% of efficiency improvement by optimizing turbine IODBL location (open angle), and there is 0.3% of efficiency improvement by optimizing the turbine IODBL angle.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.107-119
• /
• 2021

The cross-flow turbine is one of the most famous and widely used hydraulic power systems for a long time. The cross-flow turbine is especially popular in many countries and remote regions where off-grided because of its many benefits such as low cost, high efficiency at low head, simple structure, and easy maintenance. However, most modern turbines, including the cross-flow turbine, are unsuitable for the ultra-low head situation, known as less than 3m water head or zero head with over 0.5m/s flow velocity. In this study, we demonstrated a 20kW class inverted-type cross-flow turbine's performance. First, we reevaluated our previous studies and introduced how to design the inverted-type cross-flow turbine. Secondly, we fabricated the 20kW class inverted-type cross-flow turbine for the performance test. And then, we designed a testbed and installed the turbine system in the demonstration facility. In the end, we compare the demonstration with its previous CFD results. The comparing result shows that both CFD and real model fitted on guide vane angle at 10 degrees. At the demonstration, we achieved 42% turbine efficiency at runner speed 125 RPM.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
• /
• v.33 no.1
• /
• pp.95-104
• /
• 2022

Micro hydropower is a readily available renewable energy source that can be harvested utilizing hydrokinetic turbines from shallow water canals, irrigation and industrial channel flows, and run-off river stream flows. These sources generally have low head (<1 m) and low velocity which makes it difficult to harvest energy using conventional turbines. A horizontal-axis screw turbine was designed and numerically tested to extract power from such low-head water sources. The 3-bladed screw-type turbine is placed horizontally perpendicular to the incoming flow, partially submerged in a narrow water channel at no-head condition. The turbine hydraulic performances were studied using Computational Fluid Dynamics models. Turbine design parameters such as the shroud diameter, the hub-to-shroud ratios, and the submerged depths were obtained through a steady-state parametric study. The resulting turbine configuration was then tested by solving the unsteady multiphase free-surface equations mimicking an actual open channel flow scenario. The turbine performance in the shallow channel were studied for various Tip Speed Ratios (TSR). The highest power coefficient was obtained at a TSR of 0.3. The turbine was then scaled-up to test its performance on a real site condition at a head of 0.3 m. The highest power coefficient obtained was 0.18. Several losses were observed in the 3-bladed turbine design and to minimize losses, the number of blades were increased to five. The power coefficient improved by 236% for a 5-bladed screw turbine. The fluid losses were minimized by increasing the blade surface area submerged in water. The turbine performance was increased by 74.4% after dipping the turbine to a bottom wall clearance of 30 cm from 60 cm. The final output of the novel horizontal-axis screw turbine showed a 2.83 kW power output at a power coefficient of 0.63. The turbine is expected to produce 18,744 kWh/year of electricity. The design feasibility test of the turbine showed promising results to harvest energy from small hydropower sources.