Performance of Hero's Turbine Using Two-phase Mixture as Working Fluid : Experimental Results in an Air-water Two-phase System

Abstract

The development of an expander which has high efficiency and uses low-quality vapor-liquid mixture as the working fluid is very important from the view point of effective utilization of water dominated geo-thermal resources and waste heat sources from the factories. The fundamental performance of Hero's turbine, which is a radial outflow reaction turbine, has been investigated experimentally using an air-water two-phase mixture as the working fluid. Small scale models of Hero's turbine, which incorporate a 200mm diameter disk with three nozzles, have been tested in the range of Gl=0.6 to 1.2kg/s and Gg=0 to 12×10-3kg/s. The effects of air flow rate, water flow rate, and quality on the efficiency and each loss have been discussed. Furthermore, the two-phase flow configuration in the passage of turbine has been observed. '