Hello Mr. Grandmaitre,
I have thought to try the same for a family house we bought, currently under
rehabilitation. The available water pressure from the municipal provider is something
like 2.5 bar. Since the tap and all the sanitary installations at the first floor are
not higher than 5 meters from the ground, it would be eventually enough to have:
1. 0.5 bar is enough for:
- water closed basin;
- bath tub or even jacuzzi (with built in pumps);
- bathroom or kitchen water sink;
- gardening applications;
- washing machines (dishes or clothes);
2. 1 bar is a must for:
- shower installations;
- gas heating plants or boilers (20-50 kW).
So, you must eventually split the home piping for these 2 type of consumers.
However, let's say that one can use a small propellor type pico-turbine, similar to
the plastic helical wheels you find inside a regular water meter. A normal flow (5
minutes to fill a 250 liter bath tub) could be something like 0.75 l/sec. If you use
this pico-turbine, you will take 1.5 out of the 2.5 bar available, but then you will
only be able to get 0.3 l/sec (12 minutes to fill the bath tub). From these you can
get something like 15 W, at a 30% efficiency. With this energy you could eventually
run 2-5 toy cars. Obviously, 12 Vdc should be the solution, charging some battery.
If you take a normal family water consumption of 30 m3/month, it'll produce something
like 15*30000/0.3/3600 = 0.5 kWh of electric energy each month. For comparison, an
efficient refrigerator consumes roughly 1 kWh/day. So, you can save 2% of your
refrigerator energy cost, which is quite low. Very little indeed.
These are just assumptions, I would appreciate some real life facts, if someone in the
group tried this.
BR,
Radu Babau,
Owner & Responsible,
VARSPEED Hydro Ltd., Romania
----- Original Message -----
From: Yves Grandmaitre
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 9:30 AM
Subject: [microhydro] micro hydro turbine
Dear Group,
I have enjoyed the pleasure of reading many of the dispatches going through the site
and have gained much insight into the design of turbines and installations. I have a
application requiring a micro turbine. This would be a very small unit, generating in
the mA range or less. It would be powered off of household water pressure. Has anyone
ever designed something this small or have a design they feel could be scaled down to
this level?
Many Thanks
Yves Grandmaitre
VP Sales and Marketing
Powerbase Automation Systems Inc.
150 Rosamond Street
Carleton Place, Ontario
K7C 1V2
phone 613-253-5258 XT30
fax 613-257-1840
e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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