Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : November 08, 2021 - November 10, 2021
Recently, renewable energy attracts attention due to the concern about the global warming. Among them, small hydropower is expected because it has an extremely large amount of energy and a high operating rate. Although small hydropower is already widespread, there is a problem that there is a limit to the installation place and the environment load is relatively large for the small hydropower over 10kW. Therefore, we focused on pico hydropower generation less than 1 kW, which can be applied to pipelines of agricultural water and fish farm and has a low environmental load. However, pico hydropower generation has problems of lower efficiency than large one. In this research, we use a contra-rotating rotor that can generate electricity efficiently by rotating two rotors in opposite directions for high performance. In previous research, suitable design parameters for contra-rotating small hydroturbines were investigated, and the possibility of higher performance was shown. Therefore, this research is on the verification stage in field experiments. First, we investigated the head, flow rate, and water quality of the field and obtained the potential. Next, we determined the design parameters, designed the turbines, and examined the feasibility by unsteady numerical analysis. Furthermore, we made a generating equipment and conducted power generation experiment in the field. As a result, it was analyzed that this hydroturbine has sufficient power generation performance, and 689 W power generation was realized in the field experiment.
