Hydroelectric power plants for small rivers

Comparative analysis of methods of obtaining electricity from a renewable energy source is carried out. Various designs and op-tions for small hydroelectric power plants have been proposed. Positive and negative factors of structures under consideration and their impact on the environment are analyzed. The main characteristics of the flow (speed, head) for the choice of the optimal variant of hydroelectric power plant have been determined. Three variants of impellers for free-flow hydroelectric power plants are proposed with a comparison of the efficien-cy of each variant. An analysis was carried out and an impeller based on a Darrieus rotor was selected for further research. Simulation was performed in the Flow Simulation program. The initial data for the design of Darrieus rotor operating in a liquid were the diameter and width of the impeller. The calculations involved a rotor with straight and swirling blades. The swirling blades rotor is self-starting. In the course of the calcula-tion, the speed of the liquid flow approaching the rotor and the rotor speed were changed. As a result of cal-culation, the value of the positive moment for self-starting was determined, which occurs at an incident flow velocity of at least 1.3 m/s.

Design, Fabrication and Performance Evaluation of Hybrid Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

Vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) have attracted a lot of attention recently as an efficient tool in harnessing wind energy; however these types of wind turbine are faced with some challenges which affect their overall performance. The Darrieus rotor has difficulty to self-start by itself while the Savonius rotor has low efficiency. The performance of these turbines can be improved by combining the two VAWTs as one system. This paper presents the design of a hybrid VAWTs turbine. The Hybrid VAWTs combines the Darrieus rotor and the Savonius rotor as a single system to produce a high starting torque and enhanced efficiency. The Savonius rotor is placed at the centre of the three vertical blades of the Darrieus H-rotor to form the hybrid VAWTs. The hybrid VAWT was tested at four different wind speed i.e. V = 4.80 m/s, 4.50 m/s, 4.30 m/s and 3.90 m/s respectively. The performance of the hybrid VAWT was compared with the conventional straight bladed VAWT under similar experimental conditions. The obtained results showed that there is substantial improvement in the self-starting ability and coefficient of power (Cp). At V = 4.80 m/s, the Cp values for hybrid VAWT increased by 92% compared to straight bladed H-rotor VAWT. Similar improvement was also observed at wind speed of V = 4.50 m/s, 4.30 m/s, and 3.90 m/s where the Cp values increases by 71%, 10%, and 67% respectively compared to the straight bladed H-rotor.

Performance Evaluation of H-Type Darrieus Vertical Axis Wind Turbine with Different Turbine Solidity

Among renewable energy resources, wind energy is one of the best alternative for power generation. Recently, vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) received renewed interest as small-scale wind energy converter due to its suitability for urban application, where the wind condition is known to be unsteady and turbulence. Amongst various type of VAWTs, H-type Darrieus rotor has become more popular, thanks to its simple construction features, resulting to low manufacturing and installation cost. The aim of this paper is to evaluate numerically the power performance of straight-bladed Darrieus VAWT with different turbine solidity using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) technology. A series of two-dimensional CFD simulations of a three-bladed H-type Darrieus rotor were performed with 3 different solidities, σ (0.3, 0.5 and 0.7) to evaluate their power performance. Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations were used to calculate the instantaneous moment coefficient, Cm and power coefficient, Cp over a range of tip speed ratio, λ (0.5–4.5) with a free stream velocity of 8.0 m/s. The simulation results show that high solidity turbine performed well at low values of λ while turbine with low solidity has a wider operating range of λ and performed better at λ > 3.0 due to less blade-wake interactions between upstream and downstream halves of the turbine and lower blockage effect. The findings lend substantially to our understanding of physics flow around blades and turbine in order to optimize the power performance of small scale straight-bladed Darrieus VAWT operating in unsteady and turbulence wind condition.

Aerodynamic Forces Affecting the H-Rotor Darrieus Wind Turbine

Darrieus wind rotor is a vertical axis wind turbine that is a very promising kind of wind converters at remote and domestic locations that have soft and weak wind potential and speed, but from the quantitative comparison with horizontal axis wind turbines, this type of turbines has a weak performance. Additional researches are still needed to develop its efficiency to identify all the requirements of the generated power in low power demands. The aim of the current investigation is to analyze all the acting forces on the main parts of Darrieus rotor over the rotations as well as in maintenance and stationary conditions. Aerodynamic forces assessment will be executed for 3 different blade shapes (nonsymmetric and symmetric airfoils) like the airfoil section shapes of the Darrieus rotor blades. NACA 0021, LS413, and S1046 are selected as cross-sectional profile in this work. CFD simulations have been used in this work to get the different aerodynamic forces on the rotor blades of the Darrieus turbines. The present results indicated that the symmetric S1046 blade has higher forces during the rotation and stagnant (static) conditions. Moreover, the self-starting capability of NACA 0021 is better than S1046 due to low aerodynamic torsion on the S1046 blades.

The State-of-the-Art Technology of H-Type Darrieus Wind Turbine Rotors

There has been a resurgence of interest in the development of small-scale vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) in the past few decades as is evident from the plethora of published scientific work. This attention may be attributed to the desperate need for cheaper, cleaner, and off-grid mechanisms for generating electric power. In such hasty scenario, VAWTs are being considered as one of the potential solution for small-scale power generation. Among the VAWTs, H-type Darrieus rotors have undergone extensive exploration. In this review work, an attempt has been made to assemble all the major areas of research done in the field of H-type Darrieus rotor development. These areas include the aerodynamic models, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods and turbulence models, self-starting and dynamic stalling behavior, blade-vortex interaction and wake studies, and blade designs and optimization studies, besides topics of special interest like blade curvature effects and skewed flows. Overall, the work gives a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art technology of the H-type Darrieus rotor. Finally, recommendations have been made for each of the areas keeping in view of the technological development.