• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.2839-2844
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• 2007

Micro hydraulic power generation of which the output is less or equal to a 100kW is attracting considerable attention. This is because of its small, simple, renewable, and abundant energy resources. By using a small hydropower generator of which main concept is based on using the different water pressure levels in pipe lines, energy which was initially wasted by use of a reducing valve at the end of the pipeline, is collected by turbine in the hydropower generator. A propeller shaped hydroturbine has been used in order to use this renewable pressure energy. In this study, in order to acquire basic design data of tubular type hydraulic turbine, output power, head, efficiency characteristics due to the flow coefficient are examined in detail. Moreover influences of pressure and velocity distributions with the variations of runner vane angle on turbine performance are investigated by using a commercial CFD code.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.908-914
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• 2008

The world is facing a serious energy problem which destroying the environment. In addition, fossil fuel such as oil and coal that caused global warming and the environmental problems due to acid rain had been gradually exhausted. To solve this problem that has crisis of energy, it is necessary time and effort for research and development of renewable energy in the future. As alternative energy, small hydropower generation which has output of less or equal to 100kW is attracting considerable attention. This is because of its small, simple, renewable, and large amount of energy resources. By using a small hydropower generator of which main concept is based on using the different water pressure levels in pipe lines, energy which was initially wasted by use reducing of a valve at the end of the pipeline, is collected by turbine in the small hydropower generator. In this study, we investigated the influence of the number of runner vanes on the characteristics of tubular-type hydroturbine.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.17-23
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• 2013

Recently so much attention has been focused on renewable energy and, since its sources to exploit are already almost saturated in the country, the practical alternative to this situation could be a micro-turbine which uses the low head and low flow. From a point of view of local micro-turbine design capacity and manufacturing technology, the problems such as the accumulation of technical skills, the expansion of related industries, the national policy expansion and the turbine efficiency to improve are still vulnerable and it's true that there are also negative views about the economic feasibility, the technicity and the operation management of the micro-turbine. However, if the improvement can be done in technology of low-head double regulation micro-turbine to generate more outputs and the operation management can be reliably realized, the micro-turbine will be re-evaluated as an appliable source of renewable energy, even the output is small, and by a paradigm shift, it could realize a power generation as an economic and rational system.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.192.1-192.1
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• 2010

Micro hydraulic turbines take a growing interest because of its small and simple structure as well as high possibility of applying to micro and small hydropower resources. The differential pressure exiting within the city water pipelines can be used efficiently to generate electricity like the energy generated through gravitational potential energy in dams. In order to reduce water pressure at the inlet of water cleaning centers, pressure reducing valves are used widely. Therefore, pressure energy is wasted. Instead of using the pressure reduction valve, a micro counter-rotating hydraulic turbine can be replaced to get energy caused by the large differential pressure found in the city water pipelines. In this paper, detail studies have been carried out to acquire basic design data of micro counter-rotating hydraulic turbine, output power, head, and efficiency characteristics on various number of runner vane. Moreover, the influences of pressure, tangential and axial velocity distributions on turbine performance are also investigated.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.314-321
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• 2020

In this work, a preliminary design of an inlet guide vane and runner for developing a 2.5 kW hydraulic turbine was conducted by using computational fluid dynamic analysis. Three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with shear stress transport turbulence model were used to analyze the fluid flow in the hydraulic turbine. The hexahedral grid system was used to construct computational domain, and the grid dependency test was performed to obtain the optimal grid system. Velocity triangle diagram considering the flow angles of the inlet guide vane and runner was analyzed to obtain a basic geometry of the inlet guide vane and runner. Through modification of the preliminary design, the hydraulic performances of the turbine have improved under overall drop conditions. Especially, the efficiency and power of the turbine increased by 0.95% and 1.45%, respectively, compared to those of the reference model.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.5-11
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• 2014

Small hydro power, among other renewable energy resources, has been evaluated to have enough development value because it is a clean, renewable and abundant energy resource. In addition, small hydro power has the advantage of low cost development by using existing facilities like sewage treatment plants, water works and similar resources. But in the case of small hydro power systems, there are problems with degraded operation efficiency of turbine due to changes in flow rates. In order to overcome this, variable speed control can be achieved by using the power rectifier and permanent magnetic synchronous generator(PMSG) as a possible method to respond to the changes in flow rates. In this study, a commercial ANSYS CFD code was used to analyze the performance of 10kW class propeller hydro turbine and to also investigate flow characteristics at variable flow rates and runner vane.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.418-423
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• 2014

Small hydropower has been considered as a solution to resolve the problem of exhaustion of fossil fuel and industrial pollution. In this study, we developed and tested a Cross-Flow Turbine with two guide vanes to optimize the small hydropower for the site condition with large fluctuation of head and flow rate. Furthermore, in the condition of constant inlet head, CFD analysis was carried out to analyze the effect of air suction and valve position on the performance characteristics. The results showed that the air suction can minimize the hydraulic loss caused by the Recirculation flow in the runner passage and flow impact on main shaft so that it can increase the turbine efficiency and output power.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.387-394
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• 2020

A parametric study of a 2.5 kW class propeller type micro hydraulic turbine was performed. In order to analyze the internal flow characteristics in the hydraulic turbine, three dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with shear stress transport turbulence model were used and the hexahedral grid system was used to construct computational domain. To secure the reliability of the numerical analysis, the grid dependency test was performed using the grid convergence index method based on the Richardson extrapolation, and the grid dependency was removed when about 1.7 million nodes were used. For the parametric study, the axial distance at shroud span (L) between the inlet guide vane and the runner, and the inlet and outlet blade angles (β₁, β₂) of the runner were selected as the geometric parameters. The inlet and outlet angles of the runner were defined in the 3 spans from the hub to tip, and a total of 7 geometric parameters were investigated. It was confirmed that the outlet angles of the runner had the most sensitive effect on the power and efficiency of the micro hydraulic turbine.