Design and Parametric Optimization of the High-Speed Pico Waterwheel for Rural Electrification of Pakistan

Abstract

This research study presents an approach for analysis of pico hydro waterwheels by both experimental and numerical methods. The purpose of this research is to harness the energy efficiently from flowing water of irrigation channels and other shallow water sources in rural areas because the electrification of rural areas through connection to grid electricity is very costly. The novelty of this research work lies in testing of the waterwheel as a high-speed device, which is not usually explored. The review of existing literature reveals that pico waterwheels have been extensively studied but without changing the blade profile immersed in the water stream ot the inclination angle of the water stream. In this study, a pico scale waterwheel was tested with three different types of blade profiles, namely a C-shape blade, V-shape blade and straight blade, through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for different tip speed ratios (TSR), varying the immersed depth of the blade in the stream and changing the angle of the water conduit while keeping the number of blades and the diameter of the wheel constant. The numerical and experimental results were validated for the C-shape blade profile. A substantial improvement in performance is observed with a C-shape blade profile at a TSR of 0.88. The results show that by varying the angle of the water conduit, the maximum performance is achieved at inclination φ = 45°, with an overall improvement of 4.87% in the efficiency.