Development of a Positive Displacement Micro-Hydro Turbine

Abstract

The objective of this study is to develop an efficient turbine that can be used to extract micro hydropower potential of a water supply system. For the case of high head and critical low flow rate range of micro hydropower resources, it requires very low specific speed turbines which are lower than conventional impulse turbines’ specific speed. For this purpose, we develop a new Positive Displacement Turbine (PDT). In order to reveal the performance characteristics of the new turbine, one conventional impulse turbine, which is used for automatic water faucet system, was tested for comparison. The test results show that the PDT was much more efficient than a conventional turbine and it can sustain high efficiency under the wide range of operating conditions. In addition, the efficiency of the PDT is much improved when reducing its side clearance. The pressure pulsations at the inlet and outlet of the PDT can be considerably minimized by using simple dampers.