Las turbinas hidrocinéticas permiten la generación de energía eléctrica a partir de una fuente renovable, utilizando la energía de las corrientes de agua, generalmente de ríos, mares y canales elaborados por el hombre, entre otros. Constituyen una tecnología que contribuye a la conservación del medio ambiente, al no requerir la construcción de represas, dado que su funcionamiento no está limitado a alturas o caídas de agua, siendo una de las principales características diferenciadoras con relación a las centrales hidroeléctricas convencionales. En este artículo se realiza una revisión sobre turbinas hidrocinéticas de eje horizontal, teniendo en cuenta una serie de aspectos de diseño, simulación computacional, materiales empleados en la fabricación y algunas mejoras implementadas para incrementar la eficiencia de este tipo de tecnología, como el uso de
Three twisted blades of a 1 kW prototype hydrokinetic turbine were designed based on the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) theory with a tip speed ratio of 6.25; a water velocity of 1.5 m/s; an angle of attack and pitch angle of 5 and 0 • , respectively; a power coefficient of 0.4382 and a drive train efficiency of 70%. S822 hydrofoil was used to generate the coordinates of the blade cross-section. Experimental investigations and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were carried out to estimate the performance of the blade design and know the effect of the section pitch angle on the performance of a horizontal-axis hydrokinetic turbine. The obtained results showed that the increase in the section pitch angle enhanced the performance up to a certain value. Further increase in the section pitch angle resulted in a low performance and a reduction of the rotation velocity, which in turn requires a high gearing ratio of the transmission system.
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