Abstract
The use of Pumps As Turbines (PATs) can be the best solution for exploiting small hydraulic resources. Pump manufacturers do not provide the performances of their machines running in reverse mode, thus several authors developed appropriate prediction models. Some of them can only correlate the pump Best Efficiency Point (BEP) to the PAT corresponding one; other ones are able to obtain the characteristic curves. In this paper, a review of these methodologies is presented with the aim to find the best strategy that allows a designer of a small hydropower plant to select the PAT to be used and to predict its characteristic curves. The study also highlights the possibility of disassembling some models in order to merge the best parts in a more reliable strategy.
Highlights
Pumps running in reverse mode, Pumps As Turbines (PATs), can be effectively used for exploiting small hydraulic resources, with the main advantage of being cheaper than traditional hydraulic turbines [1]
PATs can be found in different plants with the aim of producing electrical energy, for example reverse-running pumps can substitute Pressure Reducing Valves (PRVs) in Water Distribution Networks (WDNs), as reported by various authors [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
From the analysis presented on the previous section, it is easy to observe that methods able to predict PAT performance curves starting from data found in pump catalogues are the ones useful for a small hydropower plant designer
Summary
Pumps running in reverse mode, Pumps As Turbines (PATs), can be effectively used for exploiting small hydraulic resources, with the main advantage of being cheaper than traditional hydraulic turbines [1]. PATs can be found in different plants with the aim of producing electrical energy, for example reverse-running pumps can substitute Pressure Reducing Valves (PRVs) in Water Distribution Networks (WDNs), as reported by various authors [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. PATs. Even if pressure control is better with PRVs, the result of the study was favorable to the use of PATs because, in parallel to pressure reducing, it is possible to recover energy that can be used for the network needs
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