Water turbines

A water turbine is a rotary engine that takes energy from moving water. Water turbines were developed in the 19th century and were widely used for industrial power prior to electrical grids. Now they are mostly used for electric power generation. They harness a clean and renewable energysource. Water wheels have been used for thousands of years for industrial power. Their main shortcoming is size, which limits the flow rate and head that can be harnessed. The migration from water wheels to modern turbines took about one hundred years. Development occurred during the Industrial revolution, using scientific principles and methods. They also made extensive use of new materials and manufacturing methods developed at the time Flowing water is directed on to the blades of a turbine runner, creating a force on the blades. Since the runner is spinning, the force acts through a distance (force acting through a distance is the definition of work). In this way, energy is transferred from the water flow to the turbine Water turbines are divided into two groups; reaction turbines and impulse turbines. The precise shape of water turbine blades is a function of the supply pressure of water, and the type of impeller selected. Reaction turbines Reaction turbines are acted on by water, which changes pressure as it moves through the turbine and gives up its energy. They must be encased to contain the water pressure (or suction), or they must be fully submerged in the water flow. Newton's third law describes the transfer of energy for reaction turbines. Most water turbines in use are reaction turbines and are used in low (<30m/98 ft) and medium (30-300m/98984 ft) head applications. In reaction turbine pressure drop occurs in both fixed and moving blades. Impulse turbines Impulse turbines change the velocity of a water jet. The jet pushes on the turbine's curved blades which changes the direction of the flow. The resulting change in momentum (impulse) causes a force on the turbine blades. Since the turbine is spinning, the force acts through a distance (work) and the diverted water flow is left with diminished energy.

Prior to hitting the turbine blades, the water's pressure (potential energy) is converted to kinetic energy by a nozzle and focused on the turbine. No pressure change occurs at the turbine blades, and the turbine doesn't require a housing for operation. Newton's second law describes the transfer of energy for impulse turbines. Impulse turbines are most often used in very high (>300m/984 ft) head applications .

Power
The power available in a stream of water is;

where:

P = power (J/s or watts) = turbine efficiency = density of water (kg/m) g = acceleration of gravity (9.81 m/s) h = head (m). For still water, this is the difference in height between the inlet and outlet surfaces. Moving water has an additional component added to account for the kinetic energy of the flow. The total head equals the pressure head plus velocity head.

= flow rate (m/s)

Efficiency Large modern water turbines operate at mechanical efficiencies greater than 90% (not to be confused with thermodynamic efficiency).

Types of water tubines

a) Francis turbine b) Kaplon turbine c) Pelton turbine

Francis turbine
The Francis turbine is a type of water turbine that was developed by James B. Francis in Lowell, Massachusetts.It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts. Francis turbines are the most common water turbine in use today. They operate in a head range of ten meters to six hundred and fifty meters and are primarily used for electrical power production. The power output ranges from 10 to 750MW, mini-hydro excluded. Runner diameters are between 1 and 10 meters.The speed range of the turbine is from 83 to 1000 rpm. Medium size and larger Francis turbines are most often arranged with a vertical shaft. Vertical shaft may also be used for small size turbines, but normally they have horizontal shaft.

Theory of operation

Francis turbine is a reaction turbine, which means that the working fluid changes pressure as it moves through the turbine, giving up its energy. A casement is needed to contain the water flow. The turbine is located between the high-pressure water source and the low-pressure water exit, usually at the base of a dam. The inlet is spiral shaped. Guide vanes direct the water tangentially to the turbine wheel, known as a runner. This radial flow acts on the runner's vanes, causing the runner to spin. The guide vanes (or wicket gate) may be adjustable to allow efficient turbine operation for a range of water flow conditions. As the water moves through the runner, its spinning radius decreases, further acting on the runner. For an analogy, imagine swinging a ball on a string around in a circle; if the

string is pulled short, the ball spins faster due to theconservation of angular momentum. This property, in addition to the water's pressure, helps Francis and other inward-flow turbines harness water energy efficiently.

Application

Francis turbines may be designed for a wide range of heads and flows. This, along with their high efficiency, has made them the most widely used turbine in the world. Francis type units cover a head range from 20 meters to 700 meters, and their output power varies from just a few kilowatts up to one gigawatt. Large Francis turbines are individually designed for each site to operate at the highest possible efficiency, typically over 90%. In addition to electrical production, they may also be used for pumped storage, where a reservoir is filled by the turbine (acting as a pump) during low power demand, and then reversed and used to generate power during peak demand.The Francis turbine has the widest range of applications among the various types of turbines available. Francis turbines generally are the most efficient solution for heads ranging from 40 to 600 meters. The runner design can be adapted to get the highest level of efficiency in its whole range of application. Francis turbines are very robust and able to sustain the high mechanical stress resulting from high heads. Alstom has successfully completed numerous installations of Francis turbines with outputs up to 800 MW. In fact, we've manufactured the largest Francis turbines ever made - each runner has a diameter of 10 meters and weighs 450 tons - for the Three Gorges Project in China. Older hydropower plants benefit directly from our ongoing efforts to increase efficiency, output and safety of our Francis turbines. In refurbishment applications, the improved overall performance offers a highly competitive solution for increased profit generation. With about 60% of the global hydropower capacity in the world, Francis turbines are by far the most widely used type of turbine. Besides always investing in R&D in order to further increase the turbine efficiency, Alstom has also developed specific products to increase the machine performance in terms of environmental conscious technology, reliability and cost. Ring gates

Alstom developed the ring gate solution, a cylinder that moves between the stay vane and the guide vanes that can replace the traditional butterfly or spherical valves. Its principal advantages are cost reduction of the civil work without compromising safety, and an increase of the plant efficiency by suppressing the head loss induced by the butterfly valve. Bearings Bearings are a critical mechanical component of hydro power plants. Alstom proposes high performance bearings. The most up-to-date technologies are: Water bearings: increased overall efficiency, environmental conscious technology, minimised operating costs Thrust bearing membrane supports, that allow to minimise friction loss while improving operation safety Self pumping bearings: minimised operating costs, safety, higher reliability.

Kaplan turbine
The Kaplan turbine is a propeller-type water turbine which has adjustable blades. It was developed in 1913 by the Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan, who combined automatically adjusted propeller blades with automatically adjusted wicket gates to achieve efficiency over a wide range of flow and water level. The Kaplan turbine was an evolution of the Francis turbine. Its invention allowed efficient power production in low-headapplications that was not possible with Francis turbines. The head ranges from 10-70 meters and the output from 5 to 120 MW. Runner diameters are between 2 and 8 meters. The range of the turbine is from 79 to 429 rpm. Kaplan turbines are now widely used throughout the world in high-flow, low-head power production.

The Kaplan turbine is an inward flow reaction turbine, which means that the working fluid changes pressure as it moves through the turbine and gives up its energy. The design combines radial and axial features.The inlet is a scroll-shaped tube that wraps around the turbine's wicket gate. Water is directed tangentially through the wicket gate and spirals on to a propeller shaped runner, causing it to spin.The outlet is a specially shaped draft tube that helps decelerate the water anrecover kinetic energy.The turbine does not need to be at the lowest point of water flow as long as the draft tube remains full of water. A higher turbine location, however, increases the suction that is imparted on the turbine blades by the draft tube. The resulting pressure drop may lead to cavitation. Variable geometry of the wicket gate and turbine blades allow efficient operation for a range of flow conditions. Kaplan turbine efficiencies are typically over 90%, but may be lower in very low head applications. Current areas of research include CFD driven efficiency improvements and new designs that raise survival rates of fish passing through. Because the propeller blades are rotated by high-pressure hydraulic oil, a critical element of Kaplan design is to maintain a positive seal to prevent emission of oil into the waterway. Discharge of oil into rivers is not permitted.

Design of Kaplan Turbine

To generate substantial amount of power from small heads of water using Kaplan Turbine it is necessary to have large flow rates through the turbine. Kaplan Turbine is designed to accommodate the required large flow rates. Except the alignment of the blades the construction of the Kaplan Turbine is very much similar to that of the Francis Turbine. The overall path of flow of water through the Kaplan Turbine is from radial at the entrance to axial at the exit. Similar to the Francis Turbine, Kaplan Turbine also has a ring of fixed guide vanes at the inlet to the turbine.

Unlike the Francis Turbine which has guide vanes at the periphery of the turbine rotor (called as runner in the case of Francis Turbine), there is a passage between the guide vanes and the rotor of the Kaplan Turbine. The shape of the passage is such that the flow which enters the passage in the radial direction is forced to flow in axial direction.

The rotor of the Kaplan Turbine is similar to the propeller of a ship. The rotor blades are attached to the central shaft of the turbine. The blades are connected to the shaft with moveable joints such that the blades can be swiveled according to the flow rate and water head available. The blades of the Kaplan Turbine are not planer as any other axial flow turbine; instead they are designed with twist along the length so as to allow swirling flow at entry and axial flow at exit.

Working of the Kaplan Turbine

The working head of water is low so large flow rates are allowed in the Kaplan Turbine. The water enters the turbine through the guide vanes which are aligned such as to give the flow a suitable degree of swirl determined according to the rotor of the turbine. The flow from guide vanes pass through the curved passage which forces the radial flow to axial direction with the initial swirl imparted by the inlet guide vanes which is now in the form of free vortex.

The axial flow of water with a component of swirl applies force on the blades of the rotor and looses its momentum, both linear and angular, producing torque and rotation (their product is power) in the shaft. The scheme for production of hydroelectricity by Kaplan Turbine is same as that for Francis Turbine.

There are variants of Kaplan turbines that only have adjustable inlet guide-vanes or adjustable rotor blades, which are known as semi-Kaplans. Although the performance of semi-Kaplans is compromised when operating across a wide flow range, for applications where the flow does not vary much they can be a more cost-effective choice. Figure 3 below shows how the efficiency various across the operating flow range for a full-Kaplan (curve A), a semi-Kaplan with adjustable blades (curve B) and a semi-Kaplan with adjustable inlet guide-vanes (curve D). It also shows the efficiency curve for a propeller turbine (a Kaplan with fixed blades and fixed inlet guide-vanes (curve C).

Figure 3 Kaplan turbine efficiency curve comparison. Kaplan turbines could technically work across a wide range of heads and flow rates, but because of other turbine types being more effective on higher heads, and because Kaplans are relative expensive, they are the turbine of choice for lower head sites with high flow rates. Typically they are used on sites with net heads from 1.5 to 20 metres and peak flow rates from 3 m3/s to 30 m3/s. In the UK this tends to be on lowland rivers with low heads (1.5 to 5 metres) and relatively high flow rates (up to 20 m 3/s). Such systems would have power outputs ranging from 75 kW up to 5 MW. The smallest good quality Kaplan turbines available have rotor diameters of 600 mm, though these tend to be prohibitively expensive, at least a very low heads, so generally speaking the smallest rotors are 800 mm. The largest rotors available have 3 to 5 metre diameters. For even larger sites multiple-turbines tend to be used rather than increasing the diameter further. Kaplan turbines are available in three basic configurations; vertical axis, horizontal axis (also called S-turbines) and bulb turbines. The commonest orientation currently being installed in the UK (at least by Renewables First) is vertical axis. Vertical-axis Kaplans have the advantage of requiring the smallest footprint or landtake. A typical layout is shown in Figure 4. The Kaplan turbine is built into the concrete structure, with the inlet volute (basically a snail shell shaped pipe that wraps around the inlet guide-vanes and distributes the water equally around the whole circumference) and draft tube cast into the concrete at the construction phase. So critical is the perfect geometry of the intake volute and draft tube that it is normal practice for the turbine manufacturer to supply the wooden formwork for these parts to be used by the civil engineering contractor.

Applications
Kaplan turbines are widely used throughout the world for electrical power production. They cover the lowest head hydro sites and are especially suited for high flow conditions. Inexpensive micro turbines on the Kaplan turbine model are manufactured for individual power production with as little as two feet of head. Large Kaplan turbines are individually designed for each site to operate at the highest possible efficiency, typically over 90%. They are very expensive to design, manufacture and install, but operate for decades.

PELTON TURBINE
The Pelton wheel is an impulse turbine which is among the most efficient types of water turbines. It was invented byLester Allan Pelton in the 1870s. The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse (momentum) of moving water, as opposed to its weight like traditional overshot water wheel. Although many variations of impulse turbines existed prior to Pelton's design, they were less efficient than Pelton's design; the water leaving these wheels typically still had high speed, and carried away much of the energy. Pelton's paddle geometry was designed so that when the rim runs at the speed of the water jet, the water leaves the wheel with very little speed, extracting almost all of its energy, and allowing for a very efficient turbine

Pelton turbines work best with heads of 50 feet or more. The high speed jet of water that results from such heads twists the bladed runner up to initiator speed without the need of added hardware. Pelton Runners can be any size from 12 foot width for megawatt installation down to 4 to 18 inch thickness for home installations. Very small surge is mandatory to run a small Pelton turbine, in some cases no more than the water issuing from a reserved spring. The need for a high head, however, confines installations to mountainous places. Also, springs tend to parch up throughout some parts of the year and ice over other parts, so care must be in use to choose a water supply that will provide year-round power. A new improvement in impulse turbines is to orient the jet at an angle to the blades, as in Turgo turbines. These units are smaller and faster than Peltons. Pelton turbines work best with heads of 50 feet or more. The high speed jet of water that results from such heads twists the bladed runner up to initiator speed without the need of added hardware. Pelton Runners can be any size from 12 foot width for megawatt installation down to 4 to 18 inch thickness for home installations. Very small surge is mandatory to run a small Pelton turbine, in some cases no more than the water issuing from a reserved spring. The need for a high head, however, confines installations to mountainous places.

Function

The water flows along the tangent to the path of the runner. Nozzles direct forceful streams of water against a series of spoon-shaped buckets mounted around the edge of a wheel. As water flows into the bucket, the direction of the water velocity changes to follow the contour of the bucket. When the water-jet contacts the bucket, the water exerts pressure on the bucket and the water is decelerated as it does a "u-turn" and flows out the other side of the bucket at low velocity. In the process, the water's momentum is transferred to the turbine. This "impulse" does work on the turbine. For maximum power and efficiency, the turbine system is designed such that the water-jet velocity is twice the velocity of the bucket. A very small percentage of the water's original kinetic energy will still remain in the water; however, this allows the bucket to be emptied at the same rate it is filled, (see conservation of mass), thus allowing the water

flow to continue uninterrupted. Often two buckets are mounted side-by-side, thus splitting the water jet in half (see photo). This balances the side-load forces on the wheel, and helps to ensure smooth, efficient momentum transfer of the fluid jet to the turbine wheel. Because water and most liquids are nearly incompressible, almost all of the available energy is extracted in the first stage of the hydraulic turbine. Therefore, Pelton wheels have only one turbine stage, unlike gas turbines that operate with compressible fluid.

Applications
Pelton wheels are the preferred turbine for hydro-power, when the available water source has relatively high hydraulic head at low flow rates. Pelton wheels are made in all sizes. There exist multi-ton Pelton wheels mounted on vertical oil pad bearings in hydroelectric plants. The largest units can be up to 200 megawatts. The smallest Pelton wheels are only a few inches across, and can be used to tap power from mountain streams having flows of a few gallons per minute. Some of these systems utilize household plumbing fixtures for water delivery. These small units are recommended for use with thirty meters or more of head, in order to generate significant power levels. Depending on water flow and design, Pelton wheels operate best with heads from 15 meters to 1,800 meters, although there is no theoretical limit. The Pelton wheel is most efficient in high head applications (see the "Design Rules" section). Thus, more power can be extracted from a water source with high-pressure and low-flow than from a source with low-pressure and high-flow, even though the two flows theoretically contain the same power. Also a comparable amount of pipe material is required for each of the two sources, one requiring a long thin pipe, and the other a short wide pipe. .