The gravitational water vortex power plant (GWVPP) is a new type of low head turbine system in which a channel and basin structure is used to form a vortex, where the rotational energy from the water can be extracted through a runner. This study is focused on the optimization of the runner to improve the efficiency of theGWVPP. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis iscarried out on three different runner designs with straight,twisted and curved blade profiles. ANSYS CFX was used to analyze the fluid flow through the channel, basin,turbine hub and blade, and results were used to evaluatethe efficiency of each of the runner designs. The CFDanalysis showed curved blade profile to be the mostefficient profile, with a peak efficiency of 82%, comparedto 46% for the straight blade runner and 63% for thetwisted blade version. An experimental test of the turbinesystem was carried out to validate the runner analysis, in ascale version of the GWVPP. The testing showed that therunner behaved as predicted from the CFD analysis, andhad a peak efficiency point of 71% at 0.5m head.
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