Design of A Micro Hydro Power Plant Based on The Vortex Flow of Water

Abstract

This research focuses on the gravitational creation of a water vortex stream, which is a novel technique in hydropower engineering. The water enters a wide straight inlet and then through a vertical conical tube, creating a vortex that exits at the shallow basin's centre floor. The blades of the turbine can spin in the vortex, which generates electricity from a generator. The gravitational vortex turbine is the name for this kind of turbine. The turbine is driven by the vortex's dynamic force rather than the pressure differential. Since no discretization of the flow domain is needed, this study relies on simulation to provide the specifics of water vortex creation. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models' boundary conditions are added depending on the experiment configuration. Two different hole sizes for water discharge were tested in two different environments. The first condition's effect shows that the vortex heights in the experiment and CFD agree. The final vortex height of the CFD model differs from the experiment outcome in the second condition. More turbulent flow has set in as the discharge hole becomes larger, creating more errors in the CFD model's prediction of water vortex formation.

A Review of Gravitational Water Vortex Hydro Turbine Systems for Hydropower Generation

“…However, the definition of H g in the equations varies significantly, although a small number of studies also used different ways to determine T. Many of these remaining studies did not provide the definition of H g , just stating that H g is the gross head or the head of water, or the available hydraulic power. These studies include [43,51,57,65,68,[72][73][74]87,89,95,99].…”

Performance Investigation of a Single-Stage Gravitational Water Vortex Turbine Accounting for Water Vortex Configuration and Rotational Speed

“…The performance of the GWVT depends on vortex height. The runner rpm is dependent on vortex height (Gupta et al, 2021). The vortex and runner rotational speed are the two key parameters by determining and maximizing the output and efficiency of the GWVT (Huwae et al, 2020).…”