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OpenMicroHydro

What if you took the integral of a Pelton wheel?

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Open Source, laser cut, high efficiency (tbd) micro-hydro wheel.

This is the result of a weekend project at a family friends house.

It is a laser cut water wheel created by taking a cross section of a Pelton turbine and positioning that curve such that the water streams follow it for the duration of the 1/60 rotation of the wheel required. 

A nice video showing a classical Pelton turbine: 

Pelton turbines can achieve upwards of 93% efficiency in converting the energy of a stream of water to rotational energy.  This project will not achieve that.

Due to the various losses I have had to introduce (water escaping off of the vanes and less than 90 degree incident angle required for the jets/vanes), I am expecting this project to land somewhere around 80% efficiency. Converting this to firing at the vanes from the inside might mitigate 10% of those losses.  Might.

My target output power for this project is 50-1200W.

Lots of media, no time to put it up yet.

Soon.

  • 1 × Harbor Freight 800w generator.
  • 1 × Acrylic
  • 1 × Fasteners..

  • Yet another project on hold.

    Daren Schwenke02/24/2022 at 04:03 0 comments

    After completing all the actual hard work, digging two sediment catch pits, fixing a trencher, trenching, and actually laying the pipe needed to generate the needed head pressure, we had to move on before I could actually assemble the prototype.. days after I finished it.

    At least Don has a working drainage system now, so I guess that works. 

    I do have a lot of media for this.  Some of it may get posted. 

    This was actually a good idea. 80% efficiency of a 93% efficient system and you can laser cut it is nothing to sneeze at.  Someday.

  • Live development..

    Daren Schwenke11/12/2021 at 19:25 0 comments

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