Pump as Turbine (PAT) is one of a hydropower plant that applies a pump with a reversed flow, working as a turbine to generate electrical power. It has the advantages of low-cost, widely available in the market and user-friendly. However, like other hydropower plants, PAT technology has low performance in term of power output. The impeller surface roughness is one of critical aspect, which influences PAT performance because poor surface roughness causes losses and cavitation. The objective of the research is to increase the PAT performance by improving the quality of the surface roughness and validate by the experimental tests. A low-cost and customize hand grinding process was applied to produce five impellers with three different levels of surface roughness (average surface roughness of 0.16 mm, 0.24 mm, and 0.40 mm), an edge rounded impeller, and a varnish lacquer coated impeller. All of the impellers undergo performance testing. The performance of the original impeller (without modification) used as a comparison. The experiment result shows that an impeller with a lower surface roughness (lower Ra number) has a higher performance. An impeller with an average surface roughness of 0.16 mm improved 10.9% of its initial performance. Additional edge rounding for a 0.16 mm surface roughness impeller would improve its performance by 13.1%. The optimum turbine efficiency of 15.45% was achieve-able by implementing an impeller with the lowest surface roughness.
Pump as turbine (PAT) is a type of micro hydro power plant, which uses a commercial pump as a turbine in order to generate electricity. Most of PAT facilities used centrifugal pump. The main component of the pump is impeller, which commonly produced by using casting process. However, this paper describes a manufacturing process to produce PAT impeller by using machining process. Four impellers were produced from two variations of materials (brass and AA-7075), each with 5 and 6 blades. The impellers were tested in a laboratory scale PAT power-plant facility, and the performance of each impeller was compared to its original impeller. The experiment results show that the impeller with 6 blades made of brass material improves 48.9% of power generated.
Applying magnetic fields to improve the arrangement of hydrocarbon molecules in fuel lines have been continuously studied in recent decades. However, scientific reports regarding the application of a magnetic field integrated with a gasoline vaporizer tube (GVT) on engine performance have not been widely discussed. Therefore, this article presents an investigation of the application of GVT with magnetic field on a single cylinder gasoline engine with three different fuel qualities, including RON88, RON92, and RON98. Torque, power, emissions and fuel consumption have been tested for scientific opinion. The results of our present investigation seem to confirm the claims of GVT inventors, where GVT increases engine torque and power, reduces CO and HC content in exhaust gases, and reduces fuel consumption. However, without considering the supply of gasoline and air from the GVT to the engine is an unfair analysis. In fact, although the established theories reveal the benefits of applying a magnetic field to the fuel line, in this case, only a small part of the fuel is induced by the magnetic field, outside the main line from the tank to the injectors. Finally, the results of this investigation provide new insights for potential users of GVT, which is currently commercially available.
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