Investigating the Effect of Inlet Head and Water Pressure on the Performance of Single Stage Gravitational Water Vortex Turbine
Author(s):
Aamer Sharif†, Muftooh Ur Rehman Siddiqi‡, Muhammad Tahir††, Ubaid Ullah†, Adnan Aslam Noon‡‡, Riaz Muhammad‡‡†, Tufail Habib‡‡‡, Naveed Ullah‡‡††, Shahana Mujeeb Siddiqi‡‡‡‡, Javed Ahmed Khan Tipu‡‡, Muhammad Arif‡‡, Nadeem Ahmed Sheikh‡‡
Affiliation(s):
†Department of Mechanical Engineering, CECOS University of IT and Emerging Sciences, Peshawar, Pakistan
‡Mechanical, Biomedical and Design Engineering Department, School of Engineering and Technology, Aston University, England
††Department of Mechanical Engineering Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan
‡‡Department of mechanical Engineering International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan
‡‡†Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bahrain
‡‡‡Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan
‡‡††Department of Mechanical Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan
‡‡‡‡Department of Communication and work, KPK, Pakistan
Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Gravitational water vortex turbine GWVT is a low head 0.7m-3m micro hydropower plant that produce electricity from rivers, streams and irrigation canal. The GWVT is a novel technology in micro hydropower due to its cost-effectiveness, environmental friendliness and requires low head, low flow rates, minimum time, and less expertise of installation. In the present study, a performance evaluation of single-stage GWVT assembled in a conical basin with a curved blade shape is investigated experimentally. Twenty-five experiments based on DOE having two factors, and five levels were carried out on single-stage GWVT. The output performance parameters such as brake torque, rotational speed, vortex height, brake shaft power, and mechanical efficiency are examined under various head and flow rates. Moreover, the effect of the brake torque on vortex height, rotational speed rpm, brake shaft power, and mechanical efficiency of single-stage GWVT is also investigated under the various head and flow rates condition. The results showed that at 0.70 m head and 0.004 m3/s flow rates, all the performance parameters such as brake torque, vortex height, rotational speed, and brake shaft power of GWVT performed better while the overall performance decrease at higher flow rates of 0.006 m3/s and maximum head of 0.8 m. Furthermore, at optimum torque the GWVT achieved higher rotational speed and maximum vortex height. The maximum efficiency of 54.44 % of single-stage GWVT is absorbed at 0.70 m head and 0.004 m3/s flow rates.