A water turbine is a
rotary engineThe rotary engine was an early type of internal-combustion engine, usually designed with an odd number of cylinders per row in a radial configuration, in which the crankshaft remained stationary and the entire cylinder block rotated around it...
that takes
energyIn physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
from moving
waterWater is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...
.
Water
turbineA turbine is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work.The simplest turbines have one moving part, a rotor assembly, which is a shaft or drum with blades attached. Moving fluid acts on the blades, or the blades react to the flow, so that they move and...
s were developed in the 19th century and were widely used for industrial power prior to electrical grids. Now they are mostly used for
electric powerElectric power is the rate at which electric energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt.-Circuits:Electric power, like mechanical power, is represented by the letter P in electrical equations...
generation. They harness a clean and
renewable energyRenewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
source.
History
Water wheelA water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of free-flowing or falling water into useful forms of power. A water wheel consists of a large wooden or metal wheel, with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim forming the driving surface...
s have been used for thousands of years for industrial power. Their main shortcoming is size, which limits the flow rate and head that can be harnessed.
The migration from water wheels to modern turbines took about one hundred years. Development occurred during the
Industrial revolutionThe Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
, using scientific principles and methods. They also made extensive use of new materials and manufacturing methods developed at the time.
Swirl
The word
turbineA turbine is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work.The simplest turbines have one moving part, a rotor assembly, which is a shaft or drum with blades attached. Moving fluid acts on the blades, or the blades react to the flow, so that they move and...
was introduced by the French engineer Claude Bourdin in the early 19th century and is derived from the Latin word for "whirling" or a "vortex". The main difference between early water turbines and water wheels is a swirl component of the water which passes energy to a spinning rotor. This additional component of motion allowed the turbine to be smaller than a water wheel of the same power. They could process more water by spinning faster and could harness much greater heads. (Later, impulse turbines were developed which didn't use swirl).
Time line
The earliest known water turbines date to the
Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. Two helix-turbine mill sites of almost identical design were found at
ChemtouChemtou or Chimtou is an ancient site in northwestern Tunisia, located 20 km from the city of Jendouba, near the Algerian border.Ancient Simitthu is known for its important marble quarries which were exploited from the 2nd century BC.The Chemtou Museum displays artifacts discovered in the...
and
TestourTestour is a small town located in the north of Tunisia. The town is perched on the hills of Medjerda Valley, 20 km south-west of Medjez-el-Bab, the crossroads between Tunis, Béja, and the north of Tunisia...
, modern-day
TunisiaTunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
, dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century AD. The horizontal water wheel with angled blades was installed at the bottom of a water-filled, circular shaft. The water from the mill-race entered tangentially the pit, creating a swirling water column which made the fully submerged wheel act like a true turbine.
Ján Andrej SegnerJohann Segner was a Hungarian born German scientist. He was born in the Kingdom of Hungary, in the former Hungarian capital city of Pressburg ....
developed a reactive water turbine in the mid-18th century. It had a horizontal axis and was a precursor to modern water turbines. It is a very simple machine that is still produced today for use in small hydro sites. Segner worked with Euler on some of the early mathematical theories of turbine design.
In 1820,
Jean-Victor PonceletJean-Victor Poncelet was a French engineer and mathematician who served most notably as the commandant general of the École Polytechnique...
developed an inward-flow turbine.
In 1826,
Benoit FourneyronBenoît Fourneyron was a French engineer, born in Saint-Étienne, Loire. Fourneyron made significant contributions to the development of water turbines....
developed an outward-flow turbine. This was an efficient machine (~80%) that sent water through a runner with blades curved in one dimension. The stationary outlet also had curved guides.
In 1844,
Uriah A. BoydenUriah Atherton Boyden was a Boston inventor and mechanical engineer. He was the brother of Seth Boyden....
developed an outward flow turbine that improved on the performance of the Fourneyron turbine. Its runner shape was similar to that of a
Francis turbineThe Francis turbine is a type of water turbine that was developed by James B. Francis in Lowell, Massachusetts. It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts....
.
In 1849,
James B. FrancisJames Bicheno Francis was a British-American engineer, who invented the Francis turbine.-Early years:James Francis was born in South Leigh, near Witney, Oxfordshire in England, United Kingdom...
improved the inward flow reaction turbine to over 90% efficiency. He also conducted sophisticated tests and developed engineering methods for water turbine design. The
Francis turbineThe Francis turbine is a type of water turbine that was developed by James B. Francis in Lowell, Massachusetts. It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts....
, named for him, is the first modern water turbine. It is still the most widely used water turbine in the world today. The Francis turbine is also called a radial flow turbine, since water flows from the outer circumference towards the centre of runner.
Inward flow water turbines have a better mechanical arrangement and all modern reaction water turbines are of this design. As the water swirls inward, it accelerates, and transfers energy to the runner. Water pressure decreases to atmospheric, or in some cases subatmospheric, as the water passes through the turbine blades and loses energy.
Around 1890, the modern
fluid bearingFluid bearings are bearings which support the bearing's loads solely on a thin layer of liquid or gas.They can be broadly classified as fluid dynamic bearings or hydrostatic bearings. Hydrostatic bearings are externally pressurized fluid bearings, where the fluid is usually oil, water or air, and...
was invented, now universally used to support heavy water turbine spindles. As of 2002, fluid bearings appear to have a mean time between failures of more than 1300 years.
Around 1913,
Viktor KaplanViktor Kaplan was an Austrian engineer and the inventor of the Kaplan turbine.-Life:Kaplan was born in Mürzzuschlag, Austria into a railroad worker's family. He graduated from high school in Vienna in 1895, after which he attended the Technical University of Vienna, where he studied civil...
created the
Kaplan turbineThe Kaplan turbine is a propeller-type water turbine which has adjustable blades. It was developed in 1913 by the Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan, who combined automatically adjusted propeller blades with automatically adjusted wicket gates to achieve efficiency over a wide range of flow and...
, a propeller-type machine. It was an evolution of the Francis turbine but revolutionized the ability to develop low-head hydro sites.
A new concept
All common water machines until the late 19th century (including water wheels) were basically reaction machines; water
pressure head acted on the machine and produced work. A reaction turbine needs to fully contain the water during energy transfer.
In 1866, California millwright Samuel Knight invented a machine that took the impulse system to a new level. Inspired by the high pressure jet systems used in hydraulic mining in the gold fields, Knight developed a bucketed wheel which captured the energy of a free jet, which had converted a high head (hundreds of vertical feet in a pipe or
penstockA penstock is a sluice or gate or intake structure that controls water flow, or an enclosed pipe that delivers water to hydraulic turbines and sewerage systems. It is a term that has been inherited from the technology of wooden watermills....
) of water to kinetic energy. This is called an impulse or tangential turbine. The water's velocity, roughly twice the velocity of the bucket periphery, does a u-turn in the bucket and drops out of the runner at low velocity.
In 1879,
Lester Pelton (1829-1908)Lester Allan Pelton was an American inventor who contibuted significantly to the development of hydropower and hydroelectric power in the old West and world-wide. In the late 1870's he invented the Pelton water wheel, then the most efficient design of the impulse water turbine...
, experimenting with a Knight Wheel, developed a
double bucket designThe Pelton wheel is an impulse turbine which is among the most efficient types of water turbines. It was invented by Lester Allan Pelton in the 1870s. The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, as opposed to its weight like traditional overshot water wheel...
, which exhausted the water to the side, eliminating some energy loss of the Knight wheel which exhausted some water back against the center of the wheel. In about 1895, William Doble improved on Pelton's half-cylindrical bucket form with an elliptical bucket that included a cut in it to allow the jet a cleaner bucket entry. This is the modern form of the Pelton turbine which today achieves up to 92% efficiency. Pelton had been quite an effective promoter of his design and although Doble took over the Pelton company he did not change the name to Doble because it had brand name recognition.
TurgoThe Turgo turbine is an impulse water turbine designed for medium head applications. Operational Turgo Turbines achieve efficiencies of about 87%...
and
Crossflow turbinesA cross-flow turbine, Banki-Michell turbine, or Ossberger turbine is a water turbine developed by the Australian Anthony Michell, the Hungarian Donát Bánki and the German Fritz Ossberger. Michell obtained patents for his turbine design in 1903, and the manufacturing company Weymouth made it for...
were later impulse designs.
Theory of operation
Flowing water is directed on to the blades of a turbine runner, creating a force on the blades. Since the runner is spinning, the force acts through a distance (force acting through a distance is the definition of
workIn physics, work is a scalar quantity that can be described as the product of a force times the distance through which it acts, and it is called the work of the force. Only the component of a force in the direction of the movement of its point of application does work...
). In this way, energy is transferred from the water flow to the turbine
Water turbines are divided into two groups;
reactionThe third of Newton's laws of motion of classical mechanics states that forces always occur in pairs. Every action is accompanied by a reaction of equal magnitude but opposite direction. This principle is commonly known in the Latin language as actio et reactio. The attribution of which of the two...
turbines and impulse turbines.
The precise shape of water turbine blades is a function of the supply pressure of water, and the type of impeller selected.
Reaction turbines
Reaction turbines are acted on by water, which changes pressure as it moves through the turbine and gives up its energy. They must be encased to contain the water pressure (or suction), or they must be fully submerged in the water flow.
Newton's third law describes the transfer of energy for reaction turbines.
Most water turbines in use are reaction turbines and are used in low (<30m/98 ft) and medium (30-300m/98–984 ft) head applications.
In reaction turbine pressure drop occurs in both fixed and moving blades.
Impulse turbines
Impulse turbines change the
velocityIn physics, velocity is speed in a given direction. Speed describes only how fast an object is moving, whereas velocity gives both the speed and direction of the object's motion. To have a constant velocity, an object must have a constant speed and motion in a constant direction. Constant ...
of a water jet. The jet pushes on the turbine's curved blades which changes the direction of the flow. The resulting change in momentum (impulse) causes a force on the turbine blades. Since the turbine is spinning, the force acts through a distance (work) and the diverted water flow is left with diminished energy.
Prior to hitting the turbine blades, the water's pressure (
potential energyIn physics, potential energy is the energy stored in a body or in a system due to its position in a force field or due to its configuration. The SI unit of measure for energy and work is the Joule...
) is converted to
kinetic energyThe kinetic energy of an object is the energy which it possesses due to its motion.It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its acceleration, the body maintains this kinetic energy unless its speed changes...
by a
nozzleA nozzle is a device designed to control the direction or characteristics of a fluid flow as it exits an enclosed chamber or pipe via an orifice....
and focused on the turbine. No pressure change occurs at the turbine blades, and the turbine doesn't require a housing for operation.
Newton's second law describes the transfer of energy for impulse turbines.
Impulse turbines are most often used in very high (>300m/984 ft) head applications .
Power
The
powerIn physics, power is the rate at which energy is transferred, used, or transformed. For example, the rate at which a light bulb transforms electrical energy into heat and light is measured in watts—the more wattage, the more power, or equivalently the more electrical energy is used per unit...
available in a stream of water is;
where:
power (J/s or watts)
turbine efficiency
density of water (kg/m³)
acceleration of gravity (9.81 m/s²)
head (m). For still water, this is the difference in height between the inlet and outlet surfaces. Moving water has an additional component added to account for the kinetic energy of the flow. The total head equals the pressure head plus velocity head.
= flow rate (m³/s)
Pumped storage
Some water turbines are designed for pumped storage hydroelectricity. They can reverse flow and operate as a pump to fill a high reservoir during off-peak electrical hours, and then revert to a turbine for power generation during peak electrical demand. This type of turbine is usually a Deriaz or
FrancisThe Francis turbine is a type of water turbine that was developed by James B. Francis in Lowell, Massachusetts. It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts....
in design.
Efficiency
Large modern water turbines operate at
mechanical efficienciesMechanical efficiency measures the effectiveness of a machine in transforming the energy and power that is input to the device into an output force and movement...
greater than 90% (not to be confused with thermodynamic efficiency).
Types of water turbines
Reaction turbines:
- Francis
The Francis turbine is a type of water turbine that was developed by James B. Francis in Lowell, Massachusetts. It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts....
- Kaplan, Propeller, Bulb, Tube, Straflo
The Kaplan turbine is a propeller-type water turbine which has adjustable blades. It was developed in 1913 by the Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan, who combined automatically adjusted propeller blades with automatically adjusted wicket gates to achieve efficiency over a wide range of flow and...
- Tyson
The Tyson Turbine is a hydropower system that extracts power from the flow of water. This design doesn't need a casement, as it is inserted directly into flowing water. It consists of a propeller mounted below a raft, driving a power system, typically a generator, on top of the raft by belt or gear...
- Gorlov
The Gorlov helical turbine is a water turbine evolved from the Darrieus turbine design by altering it to have helical blades/foils. It was patented in a series of patents from September 19, 1995 to July 3, 2001 and won 2001 ASME Thomas A. Edison . GHT was invented by Professor Alexander M...
Impulse turbine
- Waterwheel
- Pelton
The Pelton wheel is an impulse turbine which is among the most efficient types of water turbines. It was invented by Lester Allan Pelton in the 1870s. The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, as opposed to its weight like traditional overshot water wheel...
- Turgo
The Turgo turbine is an impulse water turbine designed for medium head applications. Operational Turgo Turbines achieve efficiencies of about 87%...
- Michell-Banki (also known as the Crossflow or Ossberger turbine)
A cross-flow turbine, Banki-Michell turbine, or Ossberger turbine is a water turbine developed by the Australian Anthony Michell, the Hungarian Donát Bánki and the German Fritz Ossberger. Michell obtained patents for his turbine design in 1903, and the manufacturing company Weymouth made it for...
- Jonval turbine
The Jonval turbine is a water turbine design invented in France in 1843, in which water descends through fixed curved guide vanes which direct the flow sideways onto curved vanes on the runner. It is named after Feu Jonval, who invented it...
- Reverse overshot water-wheel
Frequently used in mines and probably elsewhere , the reverse overshot water wheel was a Roman innovation to help remove water from the lowest levels of underground workings. It is described by Vitruvius in his work De Architectura published circa 25 BC...
- Archimedes' screw turbine
The Archimedes' screw, also called the Archimedean screw or screwpump, is a machine historically used for transferring water from a low-lying body of water into irrigation ditches...
Design and application
Turbine selection is based mostly on the available water head, and less so on the available flow rate. In general, impulse turbines are used for high head sites, and reaction turbines are used for
low headLow head hydro power applications use river current or tidal flows of 20 meters or less to produce energy. These applications do not need to dam or retain water to create hydraulic head; the head is only a few metres...
sites. Kaplan turbines with adjustable blade pitch are well-adapted to wide ranges of flow or head conditions, since their peak efficiency can be achieved over a wide range of flow conditions.
Small turbines (mostly under 10 MW) may have horizontal shafts, and even fairly large bulb-type turbines up to 100 MW or so may be horizontal. Very large Francis and Kaplan machines usually have vertical shafts because this makes best use of the available head, and makes installation of a generator more economical. Pelton wheels may be either vertical or horizontal shaft machines because the size of the machine is so much less than the available head. Some impulse turbines use multiple water jets per runner to increase specific speed and balance shaft thrust.
Typical range of heads
•
Archimedes' screwThe Archimedes' screw, also called the Archimedean screw or screwpump, is a machine historically used for transferring water from a low-lying body of water into irrigation ditches...
turbine
•
KaplanThe Kaplan turbine is a propeller-type water turbine which has adjustable blades. It was developed in 1913 by the Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan, who combined automatically adjusted propeller blades with automatically adjusted wicket gates to achieve efficiency over a wide range of flow and...
•
FrancisThe Francis turbine is a type of water turbine that was developed by James B. Francis in Lowell, Massachusetts. It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts....
•
PeltonThe Pelton wheel is an impulse turbine which is among the most efficient types of water turbines. It was invented by Lester Allan Pelton in the 1870s. The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, as opposed to its weight like traditional overshot water wheel...
•
TurgoThe Turgo turbine is an impulse water turbine designed for medium head applications. Operational Turgo Turbines achieve efficiencies of about 87%...
0.2 <
H < 4 (
H = head in m)
1 <
H < 10
2 <
H < 40
10 <
H < 350
50 <
H < 1300
50 <
H < 250
of a turbine characterizes the turbine's shape in a way that is not related to its size. This allows a new turbine design to be scaled from an existing design of known performance. The specific speed is also the main criteria for matching a specific hydro site with the correct turbine type.
The specific speed is the speed with which the turbine turns for a particular discharge Q, with unit head and thereby is able to produce unit power.
allow the output of a turbine to be predicted based on model tests. A miniature replica of a proposed design, about one foot (0.3 m) in diameter, can be tested and the laboratory measurements applied to the final application with high confidence. Affinity laws are derived by requiring
Flow through the turbine is controlled either by a large valve or by wicket gates arranged around the outside of the turbine runner. Differential head and flow can be plotted for a number of different values of gate opening, producing a hill diagram used to show the efficiency of the turbine at varying conditions.
The runaway speed of a water turbine is its speed at full flow, and no shaft load. The turbine will be designed to survive the mechanical forces of this speed. The manufacturer will supply the runaway speed rating.
Turbines are designed to run for decades with very little maintenance of the main elements; overhaul intervals are on the order of several years. Maintenance of the runners and parts exposed to water include removal, inspection, and repair of worn parts.
, fatigue cracking, and abrasion from suspended solids in the water. Steel elements are repaired by welding, usually with
rods. Damaged areas are cut or ground out, then welded back up to their original or an improved profile. Old turbine runners may have a significant amount of stainless steel added this way by the end of their lifetime. Elaborate
s, packing box and shaft sleeves, servomotors, cooling systems for the bearings and generator coils, seal rings, wicket gate linkage elements and all surfaces.
Water turbines are generally considered a clean power producer, as the turbine causes essentially no change to the water. They use a renewable energy source and are designed to operate for decades. They produce significant amounts of the world's electrical supply.
Historically there have also been negative consequences, mostly associated with the dams normally required for power production. Dams alter the natural ecology of rivers, potentially killing fish, stopping
, and disrupting peoples' livelihoods. For example, American Indian tribes in the
, but aggressive dam-building destroyed their way of life. Dams also cause less obvious, but potentially serious consequences, including increased evaporation of water (especially in arid regions), build up of
behind the dam, and changes to water temperature and flow patterns. Some people believe that it is possible to construct hydropower systems that divert fish and other organisms away from turbine intakes without significant damage or loss of power; historical performance of diversion structures have been poor. In the
, it is now illegal to block the migration of fish, for example the endangered great white sturgeon in North America, so
s must be provided by dam builders. The actual performance of fish ladders is often poor.