Impact of Different Blade Counts on In-Pipe Drag-Type Water Turbines

Abstract

Hydropower is a low-cost, well-developed renewable energy source. Since hydropower relies only on the energy from moving water, instead of replacing pressure-reducing valves, the in-pipe turbine might be employed to create electricity. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of the output velocity and pressure using the designated blade of an in-pipe drag-type turbine. Several configuration sets based on fixed turbine design and pipe diameter are considered. By adjusting the number of blades and the angle of the deflector, the flow is analysed to improve the performance of an in-pipe turbine. A computational fluid dynamic simulation known as ANSYS Fluent software is employed, and a 3D simplified model is designed using SolidWorks software. The results indicate that the in-pipe drag-type water turbines with five blades perform better in terms of flow efficiency since their output velocity is slightly higher but more stable than that of the turbine with only two blades.