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Preliminary Design of a Vortex Pool for Electrical Generation

Article  in  Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience · January 2011

DOI: 10.1166/asl.2012.3855

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 Preliminary Design of a Vortex Pool for
Electrical Generation
S. Wanchat and R. Suntivarakorn

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand

This study is the analysis and design of a basin structure which has the ability to form a gravitational vortex
stream. Such a high velocity water vortex stream can possibly be used as an alternative energy resource. In this
study we are interested in the formation of a water vortex stream formed by gravitation, which is a new
technique in the field of hydro power engineering. The advantage of this method for electrical generation is the
capability of producing energy using low heads of 0.7 to 3 meters. It can be applied in a low head mini/micro
hydro power plant. The governing equation is the Navier-Stokes equations. The SIMPLE method was adopted to
solve the discretized equation. The flow fields in the flume under different incoming flow conditions and basin
configurations were numerically simulated using the software ANSYS Fluent. There are 3 case studies to
investigate parameters which affect velocity vector flow field. 1) Water flow in a cylindrical barrel with an outlet
at the center of the bottom 2) Water flow field in a rectangular solid vessel with pre-rotation and outlet at the
bottom 3) Water flow field in cylindrical solid vessel with pre-rotation and outlet at the bottom.
 
 
1. INTRODUCTION simulations of the free surface water in a barrel with a bottom
A water vortex stream is a common phenomenon and is one central orifice. However, none of these researchers studied the
kind of free surface flow. There are two homogeneous fluids mechanism of formation and evolution of a free surface vortex and
concerned at the boundary, water and air. A free vortex is always did not give the reason why the free surface vortex is formed. Li
17
found at the intake of a hydraulic structure, and it is also a problem Hai-feng et al. performed experimental and numerical studies to
in the field of hydraulic engineering. Engineers try to eliminate free investigate the mechanism of formation and evolution of a free
vortices as much as possible in designing and running hydraulic vortex, and found that the Coriolis force is the major factor while
18
devices. In the water industry, almost all is free surface flow. A another factor is pre-rotation. Tuan Ta adopted a numerical study
slowly varying water surface is found when filling and emptying a by using the volume of fluid method to investigate free surface
water storage tank, slow turbulent flow is found in flow distribution vortex formation in common industrial systems such as ducts and
channels, and more turbulent flow is found in pump sumps. pumps.
Understanding the free surface flow is important for engineering On the other hand, the water vortex technique is applied in many
design and for process performance optimization. For a long time, kinds of engineering applications. In environmental engineering
19
dimensional analysis and modeling experiments have been applications, Nicolae Popescu and Dan Robescu studied the
adopted to research the free surface vortex
1-8
. For example Li et vortex separation technique which can be used to separate
9
al. investigated the flow field of a free surface vortex by using the petroleum residues from water. In hydro engineering applications,
20
particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. Gordon , Redy et al.
10 11 M.J. Khan et al. reviewed the status of hydrokinetic energy
and Odgard
12,13
proposed formulas to predict the critical conversion systems and assessed horizontal and vertical axis
submergence. John et al.
14
and Chen et al.
15
summarized the turbines for river and tidal applications, and found that the
velocity field of the free vortex. Zhao et al.
16
carried out numerical gravitational water vortex is a new method for mini/micro hydro

                                                             

 Author to whom correspondence 
power plants which are classified as Neo-Aerodynamics 3. Numerical Analysis
techniques. The gravitational vortex is a milestone in hydrodynamic 3.1 Case Study 1: Flow in cylindrical tank with an orifice at
development because in the past we needed energy to aerate the bottom
water, but now this technique uses a water aeration process to 3.1 .1 Model and Boundary Conditions
produce electrical energy. It can be an alternative energy resource The parameters which have an effect on the velocity vector
for communities in the near future. flow field of a gravitational vortex include the height of water and
A free vortex stream always occurs at a low head of water. It the ratio between orifice diameter and tank diameter. In order to
accelerates a water stream from slow to high velocity and gives it investigate these, the case study 1 was set. The model was a
high enough kinetic energy to generate electric power. The cylindrical tank with an orifice at the bottom. The orifice was set at
efficiency of a gravitational vortex power plant depends on many the center on the bottom of the tank, so water flowed out through
factors such as parameters of turbine and vortex pool, vortex pool the orifice. Model boundary conditions included that the upper
21
design and others. Punit Singh and Franz Nestman surface of the model was open to the ambient air, there were no
experimentally studied and designed the most optimized water slip conditions at the wall, and the orifice was a pressure outlet. It
vortex to determine the turbine efficiency. However, now work would be axisymmetrical when the flow reached a steady state.
has been done on how to design an optimized electric power The physical model is shown in Fig. 1. The finite volume method
source from a water vortex pool, so this is the point of this study. It was employed to discretize the governing equations and the
can have most useful applications in the field of alternative energy SIMPLE method was adopted to solve the discretized equations.
in the future. The flow fields in the flume were numerically simulated using the
In this study, the governing equation is the Navier – Stokes software ANSYS Fluent. Diameter of the model was fixed at 2
equations. The finite volume method was employed to discretize meters, while height and orifice diameter were varied.
the governing equations, while the SIMPLE method was adopted
to solve the discretized equations. There are 3 case studies
presented in this article. 1) The flow of water in a cylindrical tank
with an orifice tube outlet at the bottom. The objects of this case
study are to investigate the effect of water height and size of outlet
hole on velocity vector flow field. 2) The flow of water in a
rectangular solid vessel with inlet guide and orifice tube outlet at
the bottom. The object of this study is to investigate the effect of Fig.1. Model and mesh of case study 1
pre-rotation on the velocity vector flow field. 3) The flow of water in
a cylindrical tank with inlet guide and orifice tube outlet at the Table 1. The conditions of case study 1 to investigate the effect
bottom. The object of this study is to investigate the effect of of water height on velocity flow field
geometry design on velocity vector flow field. Condition cal 1 cal 2 cal 3 cal 4 cal 5
Water Height (cm) 20 30 40 50 60
Orifice diameter (cm) 40 40 40 40 40
Elements 5,667 6,628 7,801 8,989 9,532
2. Governing Equations Nodes 1,334 1,476 1,683 1,902 2,006
The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are given as
dV        1        Table 2. The conditions of case study 1 to investigate the effect
divV  0, F gradp  vV (1) of orifice diameter on velocity flow field
dt ρ Condition cal 1 cal 2 cal 3 cal 4
Water Height (cm) 40 40 40 40
and the governing equations in the cylindrical coordinate system
Orifice diameter (cm) 20 30 40 50
are Elements 9,585 7,801 6,498 5,406
Nodes 2,030 1,683 1,437 1,231
2
Vr Vr Vz Vθ 1 p  1 Vr 2
 Vr
2
 Vr Vr 
 Vr  Vz   2ω 0 Vθ   v    
 r r 2 2 2 
t r r r ρ r  r z r  3.1.2 Results and analysis
The tangential velocity component is one of the most
2
 Vz  Vz  Vz Vθ 1 p  1  Vz 2
 Vz
2
 Vz Vz  important characteristics of the vortex flow. The tangential velocity
 Vr  Vz     v    
 r r 2 2 2
t r z r ρ r  r z r  distribution along the radial direction at different sections is shown
 1 Vθ 2 2
 in Fig.3, where 20 cm, 30 cm, 40 cm, 50 cm, and 60 cm means the
Vθ Vθ Vθ Vθ Vr 1 p  Vθ  Vθ Vθ
 Vr  Vz   2ω 0 Vr   v     height of water in the calculation, and lines show the tangential
t r z ρ r  r r 2 2 2 
r
 r z r 
velocity distribution along the radial direction at each mean height
1  Vz from the bottom of the model tank. It was found that, from the core
(rVr )  0 (2)
r r z radius of the vortex the tangential velocity increases to a maximum
value and then decreases with increasing radius. The radius
corresponding to the maximum tangential velocity is the core
radius of the vortex. The result is shown in Fig.2 35
orifice diameter 20 cm
In order to investigate the effect of water height on the orifice diameter 30 cm
30
tangential velocity, the model was set up with water height at 60 orifice diameter 40 cm
cm, orifice diameter at 40 cm and tank diameter at 200 cm. Fig. 3 25 orifice diameter 50 cm

show the tangential velocity distribution at each section away from

20

v (cm/s)
the bottom of the model. It found that the tangential velocity
distribution is not difference obviously. At height 10 cm from the 15

bottom show the lower tangential velocity because the no slip

10
condition at the bottom wall of the tank.
5
80
20 cm 0
70 0.00 0.11 0.22 0.33 0.44 0.56 0.67 0.78 0.89 1.00
30 cm
r (m)
60 40 cm
50 cm
50 Fig. 4. Tangential velocity at different depths
60 cm
v (cm/s)

40
3.2 Case study 2: Flow in solid rectangular tank with
30
Pre-Rotation
20 3.2.1 Model and Boundary Conditions
10 The incoming flow condition is one of the important factors
affecting vortex formation. The flow field in the flume with guided
0
0.00 0.11 0.22 0.33 0.44 0.56 0.67 0.78 0.89 1.00 incoming flow conditions was simulated using the commercial
r (m) software ANSYS Fluent. The pre-rotation was generated by setting
a plate at the section of the incoming flow. Figure 6 shows the
Fig. 2. The tangential velocity distribution along the radial direction at physical model, the computational grid, and the position and
different mean heights from the bottom of the model tank direction of the plate. The flume is 30 cm in height, 50 cm in width
and 150 cm in length. The outlet is set on the bottom of the flume
80 100 cm away from the inlet and the plate is inclined at 45° to one
10 cm
70 20 cm side of the flume to generate the clockwise pre-rotation. Orifice
30 cm diameter was 15 cm and height 150 cm. The incoming rate of
60
40 cm water flow was 0.002 m/s. The orifice is a pressure outlet. The
50 cm
50 model adopted used 21,758 elements and 4,484 nodes to
v (cm/s)

40
discretize the system. The Model and mesh is shown in Fig. 5. The
SIMPLE method was adopted to solve the discretized equations.
30
The flow fields in the flume were numerically simulated using the
20 software ANSYS Fluent.
10

0
0.00 0.11 0.22 0.33 0.44 0.56 0.67 0.78 0.89 1.00
r (m)

Fig. 3. Tangential velocity at different depths

To investigate the effect of orifice on tangential velocity the

model was set up with model height at 60 cm, tank diameter at 200
cm, and the orifice diameter was varied. Fig. 4 shows the
tangential velocity distribution at different orifice diameters. It found
that tangential velocity in stream line increase with diameter of
orifice.
Fig. 5. Model and mesh of case study 2
3.2.2 Results and analysis
Fig. 6 shows the simulation results of case study 2. The
stream lines show flow direction. They show that a vortex was
17
formed. The computation results agree with Li Hai-feng et al. as
shown in Fig. 7. However, the free vortex configuration was not
well formed because the basin geometry was not suitable to
control the free vortex line.

(a)
(b)
Fig. 6. (a) horizontal and (b) vertical stream lines of flow direction in
case study 2
(a)
(b)
Fig. 7. Study results in the same model setting run as in Li Hai-feng et
al. [17] (a) Vector Field at the section 20 cm away from the bottom of
the basin (simulation) (b) Vortex configuration (experimental)
3.3 Case study 3: Flow in cylindrical tank with Pre-Rotation
3.3.1 Model and Boundary Conditions
In order to investigate the effect of basin configuration on the
velocity vector flow field, the model in case study 3 was set. Fig. 8
shows the configuration of the model in case study 3. The model
was a cylindrical tank with an orifice at the bottom center. The
incoming flow was guided by a plate. The cylinder tank size was
1m in diameter and 1m in height, and the orifice had diameter
20cm and was 20cm long. The upper surface was set open to the
ambient air. There were no slip conditions at the wall and there
was pressure outlet at the orifice. The incoming velocity was set at
1m/s.
Fig. 8. Model and mesh in case study 3
3.3.2 Results and analysis
The simulation results in Fig. 9 show that the velocity flow
field was very symmetrical and beautiful. The velocity vector flow
field was far better than in case study 2. The velocity distribution
was rather uniform. Therefore this geometry is very interesting to
research to find the optimal vortex pool shape to use in a
gravitational vortex power plant in the future.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 9. (a) horizontal and (b) vertical stream lines of flow direction in
case study
4. Conclusions
This study indicates the important parameters which can
determine the water free vortex kinetic energy and vortex
configuration and they include the height of water, the orifice
diameter, conditions at the inlet and the basin configuration. It was
found that a cylindrical tank with an orifice at the bottom center
with the incoming flow guided by a plate is the most suitable
configuration to create the kinetic energy water vortex. Therefore
future study will investigate the optimization of the vortex pool of
this geometry to determine the specifications of a gravitational
water vortex pool prototype.
Acknowledgments: This study acknowledges the support
from Center for Alternative Energy Research and Development,
Khon Kaen University.
References and Notes
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