Optimal utilization of hydrokinetic energy resources through performance improvement of the darrieus turbine using concave and flat blocking plates

Abstract

Energy extraction from renewable sources like hydrokinetic energy from the flowing water of rivers and canals is one of the affordable and clean energy generation technique. The current work is carried out towards performance enhancement of the Darrieus hydrokinetic turbine for open water channel utilization application. The investigation has been done using the flat and concave shape of blocking plate. Both blocking plates have been analyzed for different sizes as well as location at the upstream side of the turbine. The obtained results are reported after considering appropriate velocity correction. The blocking plates with projected width of 76 mm, 89 mm, 101 mm, 127 mm, 152 mm, and 203 mm are selected for the investigation. It is observed that 101 mm (Width Ratio, WR=0.36) with concave blocking plate provides maximum Cp of 0.245 at 0.99 TSR. Also, the optimum region is found between 0.143 and 0.286 Distance Ratio (DR) from the top corner of the acrylic plate. The concave blocking plate enhance the performance more compared to flat blocking plate. The conclusion is made that, the performance with flat blocking plate with optimized width and location improve the power coefficient by 10.92% and that of concave blocking plate by 18.45%.