Inventions in turbine technology 

Some of the key developments in hydropower technology happened in the first half of
the ninteenth century. In 1827, French engineer Benoit Fourneyron developed a turbine
capable of producing around 6 horsepower – the earliest version of the Fourneyron
reaction turbine.

In 1849, British–American engineer James Francis developed the first modern water

turbine – the Francis turbine – which remains the most widely-used water turbine in the
world today. In the 1870s, American inventor Lester Allan Pelton developed the Pelton
wheel, an impulse water turbine, which he patented in 1880.

Into the 20th century, Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan developed the Kaplan turbine in
1913 – a propeller-type turbine with adjustable blades

 Water Wheels and Norias

The undershot waterwheel is probably both the most obvious and the oldest method of
extracting energy from rivers. In many cases the device simply dips into the river and is
turned by the movement of the current; see Fig. 151. In the example illustrated, from
Vietnam, the entire structure is made of bamboo and bamboo tubes with one end closed are
mounted around the rim of the wheel. The bamboo tubes dip into the river and re-emerge
filled with water, which they to near the top, where the water pours out into a trough. Devices
of this kind are quite widely used in SE Asia, including China, Japan and Thailand as well as
Vietnam, and are known as "norias". Fig. 152 shows a Chinese version and illustrates the
principle and method of construction quite clearly. The noria is similar in many ways to the
Persian wheel and was discussed earlier in Section 3.4.1.

The biggest shortcoming of the noria is that they need to be of a diameter somewhat greater
than the head; this makes them fine for low head applications, but they get large and
cumbersome for higher lifts. The example illustrated in Fig. 151 is 10m in diameter and is
claimed to be able to irrigate about 8ha [65]. There is a small weir just visible in the
illustration which creates a head of about 100mm at the base of the wheel which significantly
improves the performance. The 10m diameter Vietnamese noria turns at the rate of about 1
revolution in 40 seconds and delivers water, typically, at the rate of 7 litre/sec. The cost of
these Vietnamese norias is quoted as being the equivalent of US $225-450, [65]. Although
the noria is attractive in being relatively inexpensive and also being capable of manufacture
in the village, the sites where they may be used are limited and they are particularly prone to
damage by floods. Therefore annual repair costs quoted for Vietnamese norias [65] can be
as much as 30-50% of the capital cost of the installation. However, under Vietnamese
conditions the same source indicated that some sample installations which were surveyed
produced a return for the users in terms of value of grain production in the range 24-60%
over the estimated costs.
Fig. 151 Bamboo water wheels, Vietnam

        

Fig. 152 Chinese type of small-scale Noria

 Fig. 153 Water wheel driven coil pump (see also Fig. 50)

A modern version of the Asian noria is the floating coil pump, versions of which have been
tested by the Sydfynsgruppen (supported by DANIDA) at Wema on the Tana River in Kenya,
by the Danish Boy Scouts on the White Nile at Juba in southern Sudan and by the German
agency BORDA on the River Niger near Bamako in Mali [66] (see Fig. 153). The principle of
the coil pump is explained in Section 3.6.4 and also illustrated in Fig. 50. These recent
experimental river current powered irrigation pumping systems consist of floating undershot
water wheels (mounted on floating pontoons made from empty oil barrels), and by using a
coil pump it is possible to use quite a small diameter water wheel and to use it to lift water to
a height considerably greater than its diameter (around 10-15m is possible from a 2-3m
diameter rotor).

The claimed performance of the prototype floating coil pumps was 6.6 litre/sec against a
delivery head of 5m with a river current velocity of 1.2 m/s on the Tana River at Wema. For
reasons which are not known, the similar unit tested on the Nile only pumped 0.7 litre/sec
against 5m head with the same river current velocity of 1.2m/s. Quite high current velocities
in the range from l-2m/s (2-4 knots) are necessary for devices of this kind. The Kenyan
machine was made mainly from glass-reinforced plastic (fibreglass) and cost US $4 000 in
1979, but the much less efficient Sudan prototype used steel and wood, with flexible plastic
pipe for the coil pump and only cost $350 In both cases the considerable length of flexible
pipe required accounted for about one third of the total cost.

The Royal Irrigation Department of Thailand has developed a similar floating undershot
waterwheel device to those just described, but in this case the wheel is mechanically linked
to a conventional piston pump by means of sprockets and chains. It requires a minimum
current velocity of lm/s with a river flow of at least 0.6m3/s and it is claimed to be capable of
pumping from 0.3-1.5 litre/sec to heads of 60m-15m respectively. The cost was quoted at $1
450, not including the delivery piping and header tank.

A general problem with water wheels is that if the drive is taken from the main shaft, the
costs become high in relation to the power available, because large slow-moving (and
therefore expensive) mechanical drive components are needed to transmit the high torque
involved. Also, with shafts only turning at between 1-5 rpm (which is typical of waterwheels)
either very large pump swept volumes are required or a lot of gearing up is necessary to
drive a smaller pump at an adequate speed; either way the engineering is expensive in
relation to the power. Therefore waterwheels, although apparently offering simple solutions,
are not always as easy to adapt for powering mechanical devices such as pumps as might at
first be expected.

 Novel Water-Powered Devices

i.    The Plata Pump

An unconventional alternative to a small water wheel for powering a small pump is the Plata
Pump (Fig. 154) . This device was invented in New Zealand and some efforts have been
made to commercialize it internationally, although it is not believed to be very widely used. In
it, a series of small turbine rotors are mounted on a single shaft along the axis of a cylindrical
duct, approximately 2.5m long by 0.5m in diameter. It is a bit like a multi-rotored propeller
turbine, although there are no diffusers or other static blades to control rotation of the fluid.
The shaft drives two opposed single-acting piston pumps via a crank. The Plata Pump is
intended to be mounted in a low dam or weir, so that it slopes at a slight angle and water
runs downhill through it. It is not supposed to run full of water, but works best when running
around 1 to J full; perhaps because when running full the flow rotates and thereby causes
loss of efficiency.

Fig. 154 Cut-away view showing general arrangement of a Plata pump installation

The Plata Pump is designed to operate on heads of 0.25-lm; usually this is engineered by
placing the Plata Pump at an appropriate angle on a stream bed and building up a weir with
rocks or other material to create the necessary head. The overall efficiency of the Plata
Pump has been measured as being in the 6-30% range at delivery heads from 6-90m; [66],
The best efficiency was recorded at 24m head. Typical performance with a working flow of
85 litre/sec is 1.3 litre/sec at 6m, 0.25 litre/sec at 24m, 0.11 litre/sec at 38m. A working flow
of 153 litre/sec was necessary to allow 90m delivery head to be reached.

The price of the Plata Pump in kit form was about US $2 000 in 1980, [66], so it seems to be
relatively expensive in relation to its performance in comparison, for example, with Chinese
turbine pumps described earlier. It also appears to be less efficient and robust than the
turbine pump.

The river current turbine

The energy of motion (or kinetic energy) available in river or canal currents is, exactly as for
wind, proportional to the cube of the velocity. The relationship between power and velocity
is:

where p is the density of water (1000kg/m3 for fresh water), A is the area of cross section of
current in m2 and V is the mean velocity through the cross-section in m/s. From this the
following power densities can be calculated, as shown in Table 27:

Table 27 POWER DENSITY IN WATER CURRENTS AS A FUNCTION OF WATER

VELOCITY

velocity (m/s) 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0

(knots) 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0

power density (kW/m2) 0.06 0.5 1.7 4.0

It is interesting to compare this with Table 16 giving the equivalent result for wind; similar
power is experienced in water at about 1/9 the velocity in wind needed to achieve the same
power, due to the much higher density of water. Since a mean wind speed of 9m/s would be
considered most attractive for the economic use of wind power, it is clear that even currents
of lm/s may be more than adequate as a power source if they could be exploited efficiently.
Moreover, a major problem with exploiting wind energy is its great variability, but river
currents generally flow steadily 24 hours per day, [67].

The traditional and most obvious technique, undershot water wheels, are an inefficient
means to exploit currents, since the bulk of the machine is external to the water at any one
time and therefore provides no power. Therefore the Intermediate Technology Development
Group (UK) undertook a programme, financed by the Netherlands Government, to develop
turbines which would operate efficiently entirely submerged to extract shaft power from river
currents; (the author must declare an interest, since the device in question was developed
under his technical supervision).
The main device tested is a vertical axis cross-flow turbine similar to the Darrieus windmill in
principle (see Section 4.7.2). It has the advantage that the vertical drive shaft conveniently
comes through the surface, so that any mechanical components can be located on the deck
of a pontoon above water. Unlike a water wheel this device can intercept a comparatively
large cross-section of current using little material other than a rotor to do so; moreover it
turns relatively fast in relation to the current (13.5rpm in this case with a lm/s current) which
reduces the gearing needed to drive a pump at a reasonable speed. The concept is
illustrated in Fig. 155 , while an actual working irrigation pumping unit, installed on the white
Nile near Juba in southern Sudan, worked reasonably reliably, was fitted with a 3m diameter
vertical axis rotor (3.75m2 cross-sectional area) powering a centrifugal pump via a two stage
toothed belt speed increaser. It was tested and found to pump approximately 3.5 litre/sec
through a head of 5m with a current of 1.2m/s. The rotor efficiency is 25 to 30% (as with a
small windmill) and an overall system efficiency of 6% has been achieved,  including pipe
losses as well as pump and transmission losses. The prototype, which cost the equivalent of
US $5 000 to build, has been used successfully to irrigate a 6ha vegetable garden. Smaller,
simpler, low-cost versions were also tested near Juba. Costs are difficult to determine with
prototypes, but the device appears to be potentially economically attractive.

Fig. 155 IT river current turbine pump

The potential for using the river to pump its own water has been demonstrated, but further
work will be needed to optimize this device and adapt it for commercial production. However,
the considerable power potential in many river, canal and for that matter tidal currents should
ensure that this at present little known and little thought of power source gains increasing
recognition, and will eventually be made use of. This is particularly because many large
rivers (such as the Nile, Euphrates, Zambesi, Indus), flow through regions which are arid or
which have several months of dry season.
 . able 21 EFFICIENCY OF HYDRO POWERED SYSTEMS                                       

type of device efficiency factor

(typical)
Undershot water wheel 0.30-0.40
Vertical shaft water mill 0.20-0.35
Poncelet undershot or Breast wheel 0.50-0.65

Overshot water wheel 0.50-0.70

Impulse turbine (eg  Pelton) 0.70-0.85
Reaction turbine (eg  Francis, Prop.) 0.60-0.80

Water pressure engine 0.60-0.80

Turbine-pump 0.35-0.50
Hydraulic ram (hydraulic output) 0.30-0.60
River current converter 0.25-0.30