Analysing Hydraulic Efficiency of Water Vortex Pico-Hydro Turbine using Numerical Method

To overcome the lack of rural electricity in Indonesia vortex pico-hydro turbines are used as an option solution. This is due to the ability of the vortex turbine to work in low head conditions effectively. This study is conducted with comparison of curved and straight blade to obtain a more optimum turbine performance. Two methods are carried out in this study, analytical and computational method. Analytical methods are used to determine blade geometry and its performance while computational methods are used to analyse internal flow of turbine. As a result, the study concludes that hydraulic efficiency of vortex turbine in this study doesn’t affect much between straight and curved blades. The hydraulic efficiency for those blades is around 0.63. In addition, the study continued by analysing the optimum location of the blade in the basin. The results of the study show that the optimum ratio of depth and diameter of the blade is 0.33 with turbine efficiency is 0.84. Thus, the location of the blades is more important than the type of blades.