An Innovative Vertical Axis Current Turbine Design for Low Current Speed

Abstract

This article presents the new innovative concept for optimal design of Vertical Axis Current Turbines (VACT) applicable in low current speed which is being increasingly used to harness kinetic energy of water and convert it into other useful forms of energy as a clean and renewable energy. Widespread commercial acceptability of these turbo machines depends upon their efficiency. This largely depends upon the geometric features of the hydro turbines such as operation of designed system, joints, number and shape of blades and etc. The concept of VACT was proposed to provide a solution for the case of low current force inflow to vertical axis turbines. VACT has four suitable blades with flexible hinge joint to guide the water in come to reduce the drag force, light shaft and arms with stiff metal to make rigid and strong structure. The current study discusses the components of VAC turbine, rigidity of structure, performance, executive concept, efficiency, material, gearbox, environmental impacts and prevention of water corrosion. The new proposed innovative concept of VACT has flexible hinge connection for changing the blades directions automatically to reduce hydrodynamic drag and increase the hydrodynamic pressure to rotate the main shaft and enhance the efficiency as well. Main shaft connected to epicyclical gearbox to provide the higher torque for maximum electric power generation.

Taguchi Optimization of Water Savonius Turbine for Low-Velocity Inlets Using CFD Approach

“…The performance of the optimized turbine in different TSRs can be shown in Figure 5, and it can be seen that the performance has improved by a factor of around 15% compared to the typical Savonius turbine with the same diameter adapted from [36,38]. The percentage increase was calculated by Equation 10for each TSR, and the average value is determined.…”

Arm Effect on Performance of Vertical Axis Current Turbine Using RANS Simulation

“…By comparing the simulation results with the available experimental and numerical results, further analyses is accepted and can be rely on, so ,at first step the validation study should be done. The numerical method has the ability to run a full scale simulation, thus in present study the height (H) of 7.5 m and 6.75 m rotor diameter (D) of full scale prototype dimension [9]and with a constant current speed of 0.56m/s due to low river current velocity [8] also, this value is same as a very low ocean current in Malaysia [10] is used for analysy.incompressible, 2-D unsteady flow twoequation of RANS equations were implemented to solve the turbulence flow. The two-equation turbulence models was realize k-e [11].The experimental data was compared with the simulation results taken from [12].mesh structure, computational domain and result shown in Fig.…”

“…(3) CQ, CP and λ are torqe coefficient, power coefficient and tip speed ratio, recpectivly.rotor torqe (Q), actual velocity of water (V 0 2 ),density of water (ρ), rotor radius (R), rotor angular velocity (w) and cross section (Sref) defined above equations. [4]The power coefficient (C p ) is main factor to shows performance of turbine that the hydro kinetic turbines can only harness a fraction of the total kinetic power thus; improvement on turbine system is required to reach a high value of performance coefficient (VPC), therefore Many researchers are going to development VACT and increase efficiency of them to capture kinetic energy of water flow Publications [5,6,7,8]included more information about development issues regarding VACT turbines.…”

Global renewable energy and its potential in Malaysia: A review of Hydrokinetic turbine technology

“…The authors proposed a novel design of vertical axis turbine to increase the performance of the turbine and decrease the negative drag force of the current water using arm and self-adjusting blades to extract the current power which can be used in rural area especially territories with a low-speed current [74].…”

“…efficiency, which is usually assumed to be around 87% [73,74] P el ¼Electrical power output of the generator.…”