Investigation of design parameters on self-floating water wheel for micro-hydropower generation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nowadays, the exploitation of renewable hydropower energy sources promotes the research about water wheel as a significant source of hydropower. However, the performance characteristics of floating water wheel are still appeared to be largely unknown. This research aims to investigate the design parameters of self-floating water wheel (wheel with floating ability) to generate the maximum power output. Various parameters including ridge’s profile, blade number and immersed radius ratio were studied throughout the research. Different types of ridge’s profile (flat, curve) with various blades number (4, 6, 8) and different immersed radius ratio (0.6, 0.7, 0.8) were investigated. The output parameters for this research are rotational speed and maximum torque measured by tachometer and load cells, respectively. The performance of self-floating water wheel depending on the maximum power output which derived from rpm and maximum torque loads. The results show that the performance of curve blade self-floating water wheel is higher than the flat blade self-floating water wheel. The highest performance of self-floating water wheel is curve profile with blade number of 6 at immersed radius ratio of 0.8, which is higher than the performance of flat blade self-floating water wheel. The highest maximum mechanical power output regarding to these parameters is 0.254 W.