A NEW SOLVER FOR NON-ISOTHERMAL FLOWS IN NATURAL AND MIXED CONVECTION

Most thermal fluid flow of real-life practical problems fall in the category of low Mach-number or incompressible flow (e.g., industrial flows inside ducts, or around stationary/moving objects, flows in biological/biomedical problems, or atmospheric flows). Several numerical techniques have been proposed for simulation of thermal flows, Finite Difference (FDM), Finite Element (FEM), Finite Volume (FVM) and Lattice Boltzmann (LBM) methods. Unlike the FVMs and FEMs, the classical FDMs show some difficulties in handling irregular geometries. Conventional formulation of FEMs (e.g., Galerkin FEMs) suffers from the lack of local mass balance, recovered by modified formulations (Narasimhan & W…

A New Cross-Flow Type Turbine for Ultra-Low Head in Streams and Channels

In the last few decades, hydropower production has been moving toward a new paradigm of low and diffused power density production of energy with small and mini-hydro plants, which usually do not require significant water storage. In the case of nominal power lower than 20 kW and ultra-low head H (H < 5 m), Archimedes screw or Kaplan type turbines are usually chosen due to their efficiency, which is higher than 0.85. A new cross-flow type turbine called Ultra-low Power Recovery System (UL-PRS) is proposed and its geometry and design criteria are validated in a wide range of operating conditions through 2D numerical analysis computed using the ANSYS Fluent solver. The new proposed solution…

MAST-RT0 SOLUTION OF 3D NAVIER STOKES EQUATIONS ON UNSTRUCTURED MESHS. PRELIMINARY RESULTS IN THE LAMINAR CASE

EXTERNAL RECIRCULATION IN PRS TYPE TURBINE: EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL RESULTS.

Cavitation is a relevant phenomenon for structural safety and noise level in hydraulic turbines, occurring when water pressure falls below the vapor value at a given temperature. In this case bubbles of vapor grow inside the liquid and move along with it. When the pressure returns above the vapor value the bubble collapses, and the pressure can locally achieve very high values, up to 7000 bars (Kumar & Saini, 2010). Moreover, if the bubble was confined also by the solid wall of a blade, the solid particles suspended in the fluid can be transported by the fluid ones and hit the solid wall at very high velocity, generating erosion. Cavitation is also the source of high frequency noise, ve…

Energy recovery from rectangular weirs in wastewater treat-ment plants

Hydraulic turbines for energy recovery in wastewater treatment plants, with relatively large discharges and small head jumps, are usually screw or Kaplan types. In the specific case of a small head jump (about 3 m) underlying a rectangular weir in the major Palermo (Italy) treat-ment plant, a traditional Kaplan solution is compared with two other ones: a Hydrostatic Pres-sure Machine (HPM) located in the upstream channel and a cross-flow turbine located in a specif-ic underground room downstream the same channel.

Numerical analysis of a new cross-flow type hydraulic turbine for high head and low flow rate

Cross-flow turbines have recently been proposed for energy recovery in aqueducts when the outlet pressure is greater than zero, owing to their constructive simplicity and good efficiency within a large range of flow rates and head drops. In the case of high head drop (higher than 150 m) and relatively small discharge (lower than 0.2 m3/s), the traditional design of these turbines leads to very small widths of the nozzle and the runner; as a consequence, friction losses grow dramatically and efficiency drops down to very low values. Standard Pelton turbines require zero outlet pressure and cannot be used as alternatives. A new counter-pressure hydraulic turbine for high head and low flow rat…

MAST-RT0 solution of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in 3D complex domains

A new numerical methodology to solve the 3D Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible fluids within complex boundaries and unstructured body-fitted tetrahedral mesh is presented and validated with three literature and one real-case tests. We apply a fractional time step procedure where a predictor and a corrector problem are sequentially solved. The predictor step is solved applying the MAST (Marching in Space and Time) procedure, which explicitly handles the non-linear terms in the momentum equations, allowing numerical stability for Courant number greater than one. Correction steps are solved by a Mixed Hybrid Finite Elements discretization that assumes positive distances among tetrahedr…

Impeller optimization in crossflow hydraulic turbines

Crossflow turbines represent a valuable choice for energy recovery in aqueducts, due to their constructive simplicity and good efficiency under variable head jump conditions. Several experimental and numerical studies concerning the optimal design of crossflow hydraulic turbines have already been proposed, but all of them assume that structural safety is fully compatible with the sought after geometry. We show first, with reference to a specific study case, that the geometry of the most efficient impeller would lead shortly, using blades with a traditional circular profile made with standard material, to their mechanical failure. A methodology for fully coupled fluid dynamic and mechanical …

RECUPERO ENERGETICO ALL’INTERNO DELLE RETI ACQUEDOTTISTICHE MEDIANTE MICROTURBINE IDRAULICHE

Low-Head Hydropower for Energy Recovery in Wastewater Systems

Hydraulic turbines for energy recovery in wastewater treatment plants, with relatively large discharges values and small head jumps, are usually screw Archimedes or Kaplan types. In the specific case of a small head jump (about 3 m) underlying a rectangular weir in the major Palermo (Italy) water treatment plant, a traditional Kaplan solution is compared with two other new proposals: a Hydrostatic Pressure Machine (HPM) located at the upstream channel and a cross-flow turbine (CFT) located in a specific underground room downstream of the same channel. The fluid mechanical formulations of the flow through these turbines are analyzed and the characteristic parameters are stated. Numerical ana…

OTTIMIZZAZIONE FLUIDO-MECCANICA DI TURBINE IDRAULICHE CROSSFLOW

MAST-RT0 solution of 3D Navier Stokes equations in very irregular domains. Preliminary results in the laminar case

A new numerical methodology to solve the 3D Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible fluids within complex boundaries and unstructured body-fitted tetrahedral mesh is presented and validated with three literature and one real-case tests. We apply a fractional time step procedure where a predictor and a corrector problem are sequentially solved. The predictor step is solved applying the MAST (Marching in Space and Time) procedure, which explicitly handles the non-linear terms in the momentum equations, allowing numerical stability for Courant number greater than one. Correction steps are solved by a Mixed Hybrid Finite Elements discretization that assumes positive distances among tetrahedr…

Design of Reliable and Efficient Banki-Type Turbines

A new shape for the external surface of the Crossflow turbine blades is proposed, which allows for the preservation of hydraulic efficiency in spite of a significant maximum blade thickness providing mechanic robustness and reliability. The final shape of the blades is assessed using an iterative solution for two uncoupled models: a 2D computational fluid dynamic (CFD) and a structural 3D finite element method (FEM) analysis of a single blade. Application of the proposed methodology to the design of a power recovery system (PRS) turbine, a new backpressure Crossflow-type inline turbine for pressure regulation, and energy production in a real Sicilian site follows.