Performance of vertical axis water turbine with eye-shaped baffle for pico hydropower
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Zhuohuan HU, Dongcheng WANG, Wei LU, Jian CHEN, Yuwen ZHANG
Performance of vertical axis water turbine with eye-shaped baffle for pico hydropower
© Higher Education Press 2020
Abstract A series of inline pico hydropower systems, which could be used in confined space, especially for water distribution networks (WDNs), was designed and investigated. The turbine with an eye-shaped vertical water baffle was developed to evaluate the hydraulic performance. A three-dimensional dynamic mesh was employed and the inlet velocity was considered as the inlet boundary condition, whereas the outlet boundary was set as the outflow. Then, numerical simulations were conducted and the standard k-ε turbulence model was found to be the best capable of predicting flow features through the comparison with the experimental results. The effects of the opening diameter of the water baffle and installation angle of the rotor on the flow field in the turbine were investigated. The results suggested that the water baffle opening at d = 30 mm and the rotor at a 52° angle could achieve the highest efficiency of 5.93%. The proper eye-shaped baffle not only accelerates the fluid flow and generates positive hydrodynamic torque, but also eliminates the flow separation. The scheme proposed in this paper can be exploited for practical applications in the water pipelines at various conditions and power requirements. Keywords vertical axis water turbine, eye-shaped, vertical water baffle, pico hydropower
Received Apr. 11, 2020; accepted Jun. 11, 2020; online Aug. 30, 2020 Zhuohuan HU, Dongcheng WANG, Wei LU, Jian CHEN Shanghai Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow and Heat Transfer in Power Engineering, School of Energy and Power Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 20093, China
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Yuwen ZHANG ( ) Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA E-mail: [email protected]
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Introduction
The development of the economy has resulted in a tremendous increase in the consumption of non-renewable energy from fossil fuel. In recent years, renewable energy resources like water, wind, solar, and hydrogen have received global attention. Hydropower is cheap, clean, and environmentally friendly, which makes it a good candidate for renewable energy [1]. By the end of 1999, hydropower had produced 2650 Terawatt hour (TWh), which was 19% of the global total output of electricity. The hydropower produced nearly 3100 TWh at the beginning of 2009, and it is expected to reach 3606 TWh by 2020 [2]. China is improving upon wind and hydropower to put a cap on increased CO2 emissions [3]. Generally, large and medium-sized hydropower projects with high costs provide the required electric power. Nevertheless, there is a massive population living in remote, rural, and hilly areas where as many as 1.3 billion people are without access to electricity [4–7]. Since grid extension is too expensive in these areas, pico hydropower (up to 5 kW capacity) can be an efficient and attractive optio
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