• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.5-13
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• 2015

The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of a new type of casing for the inline Francis hydro turbine. Comparing with the traditional turbine with spiral casing, this turbine is unique for its flow passage shape at the first stage of flow to the turbine, very similar to a pipe, called inline casing. Before the commercialization of this new type of casing, a global investigation of the inline casing must be conducted. Preserving the structural characteristics of simple, compact-size and convenient for manufacture, different shapes of the belt passage, vertical corner and stay vanes are applied to investigate the influence of flow passage shape on the turbine performance. Stable and relatively high efficiency is achieved regardless of flow passage shape difference proving the feasibility of the inline casing used in a hydro turbine.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.10
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• pp.1225-1231
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• 2014

This paper presents the performance characteristic of a Francis hydro turbine with an inline casing. This turbine is designed for city water supply system. Due to large changes in ground elevation with high points and low points, some systems may experience larger-than-normal required pressures in areas with low ground elevations. One way to dissipate these excess pressures is by the use of an inline-turbine instead of an inline-pressure reducing valve. For best applicability and minimal space consumption, the turbine is designed with an inline casing instead of the common spiral casing. As a characteristic of inline casing, the flow accesses to the runner in the radial direction, showing a low efficiency. The installation of vanes improves the internal flow and gives the positive encouragement to the output power. For the power transmission to the outside of the turbine casing from the runner axis, a belt passage is designed in the inline casing, as its influence, the region after the belt passage shows a relatively low output power. The clearance gap in the runner side space is considered, in which a small volume of flow is contracted into the clearance gap, forming the leakage flow. The leakage flow leads to a decrease in the efficiency.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.1612-1620
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• 2016

This paper presents the dynamic excitation control of a siphon-turbine coupled pico-hydro powered cage rotor induction generator and load matching for off-grid electricity generation. Through the proposed dual-role of the current-controlled voltage source converter (VSC), acting as static synchronous compensator and load controller, real and reactive power are dynamically controlled in a decoupled manner with a self supported DC-bus. The proposed scheme entails minimal computation for ensuring the rated (set) capacity of real power. The scheme also exhibits fault immunity for protection, thus enabling the effective handling of constant power electrical loads presented by base telecom station towers in remote locations. The performance of the system is evaluated under MATLAB/Simulink and is experimented through a developed hardware prototype. Simulation and experimental results show close conformity and validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.664-667
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• 2009

The Francis type hydro turbine with vertical axis has been designed and analized for hydraulic performance verification. The guide vane angle of turbine casing were designed to be varied according to the condition of head and flowrate. When the changes in flowrate and output were comparatively large, the efficiency drop were small, so the efficiency characteristics and stability of the entire operating condition were maintained in good condition. These results showed that the developed hydro turbine in this study will be suitable for small hydro power stations with medium and high head such as agricultural reservoirs and large dam.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.660-663
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• 2009

Currently in Korea, the lack of facilities and technical criteria for the performance test of small hydropower degrades the efficiency of the domestic small hydropower turbine, and makes it difficult to objectively evaluate the performance of hydro turbine. Therefore Korean institute of water and environment in K-water planned making a basis of performance test of small hydropower by using our flowmeter calibration system the largest one in Korea. We planned the maximum measurable power of hydro turbine will be 200 kW in our system. Improving the efficiency of small hydropower system can achieve the additional development benefit about 1.5 billion won per year.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.325-331
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• 2016

Computational fluid numerical analysis using the commercial code CFX was performed to develop a Pelton turbine for a pico hydro power generator using the circulating water of a cooling tower in a large building. The performance of the Pelton turbine was examined for different design factors, such as the bucket shape, in which the Pelton wheel was connected in an appropriate manner to the pipe section, and the number of buckets in order to find the optimal design of Pelton turbine for a pico hydro power using surplus water. A benchmark test was carried out on the manufactured small scale Pelton turbine to validate the design method of the Pelton turbine by numerical analysis. The results obtained by comparing the flow characteristics and power output measured using the ultrasonic flowmeter, the pressure transducer and the oscilloscope with the numerical results confirmed the validity of the analytical design method. The possibility of developing Pelton turbines for kW class pico hydro power generators using surplus water with an average circulation velocity of 1.2 m/s for the chosen bucket shape and number of buckets in a 30 m high building was confirmed.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.267-274
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• 2009

This paper deals with a voltage and frequency (VF) controller for an isolated power generation system based on an asynchronous generator (AG) driven by a pico hydro turbine. The proposed controller is a combination of a static compensator (STATCOM) and an electronic load controller (ELC) for decoupled control of the reactive and active powers of the AG system to control the voltage and frequency respectively. The proposed generating system along with its VF controller is modeled in MATLAB using SIMULINK and PSB (Power System Block Sets) toolboxes. The performance of the controller is verified for the proposed system and feeding various types of consumer load such as linear/non-linear, balanced/unbalanced and dynamic loads.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.1992-1996
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• 2007

The Kaplan turbine model has been tested and analized. The blade angle and the guide vane opening of the turbine model were designed to be varied according to the best combination of guide vane and runner blade opening. When the changes in head and output were comparatively large, the efficincy drop were small, so the efficiency characteristics and stability of the entire operating condition were maintained in good condition. These results showed that the developed model in this study will be suitable for small hydro power stations with large changes in head and load.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.379-382
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• 2008

The propeller type hydro turbine model with vertical axis has been tested and analized. The blade angle of runner of turbine model were designed to be varied according to the condition of head and flowrate. When the changes in head and output were comparatively large, the efficiency drop were small, so the efficiency characteristics and stability of the entire operating condition were maintained in good condition. These results showed that the developed model in this study will be suitable for small hydro power stations with large changes in head and load such as sewage treatment plants and agricultural reservoirs.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.373-380
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• 2019

In this paper, a pico hydro turbine employing low head circulation water at fish farms is designed and evaluated. Due to the advantages of simple structures, small head requirements, and low-cost investment, the constant thickness propeller turbine is considered as a feasible solution. The design process based on the free vortex method is presented in full detail, and a 4-blade runner is built using BladeGen. The turbine performance is analyzed both numerically and via experimental methods. Despite slight differences, the results show similar trends between CFD simulations and experiments carried out on factory test-rigs in a wide range of working conditions. At the design flow rate, the turbine achieves the best efficiency of 70 %, generating 3.5 kW power when rotating at 420 rpm. The internal flow field, as well as the turbine's behavior, are investigated through the distribution of blade streamlines, pressure, and velocity around the runner. Moreover, the pressure coefficient on the blade surface at 3 span positions is plotted while the head loss for each simulation domain is calculated and displayed by charts.