Experimental and Numerical Investigation of River Hydrokinetic Turbines for Water Pumping Applications

This study is carried out to design a low head turbine which will utilize the kinetic energy of the flowing river stream to drive a water pump. When the turbine rotates, the coupled pump will pump the water to the specified location. Two to three such types of turbines will be installed in the river to fulfill the water requirement of the small town. Axial flow Hydrokinetic turbine design is chosen because it has high efficiency and fabrication ease. Initially, a scaled model of full-scale turbine and diffuser is fabricated and tested in a closed-circuit water tunnel. The same scaled model is also analyzed by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and the numerical results are validated. The computational grid for numerical analysis contains approximately 5.5 million cells with average y+ value less than five and the k-omega SST turbulence model is utilized to close the system of Reynolds Average Navier-Stokes Equations.  In future, a validated CFD model will be used to simulate the full-scale turbine prototype in actual river conditions and will be helpful in optimizing the design.