Performance Assessment of Water Turbine Subjected to Geometrical Alteration of Savonius Rotor

Abstract

The availability of fossil fuels as an energy source has decreased every year due to the increment of public and industry consumptions, as well as its characteristic as a non-renewable resource. Thus, various efforts are concentrated to develop another source to decrease dependency on fossil fuel. Hydropower is one of the best renewable energy sources because it is environmentally friendly and its management is relatively cheaper than other alternatives. The abundant availability of water flow in Indonesia makes hydropower an alternative new energy source that is easily developed, one of which is research on water turbines. The study is aimed to conduct a performance assessment on the savonius water turbine accounting for the effect of modifying the rotor geometry. The research subject will use a 110 mm of diameters single-stage rotor that will be modified into number and shape of the blade. Variations in number of blade, were applied at the number of 2 and 3 with two types of the blade (type letter S and letter L). Calculation of the research was carried out using computational fluid dynamic technique of the Ansys code in which the interacting fluid flow is explicitly idealized. The results of simulation and analysis indicated that maximum C_p was achieved in Savonius with modified Type L rotors. This configuration is suitable to be applied to the river and sewage water pipes, to utilize the flow of wastewater as a new energy source and reduce the level of emissions using fossil resources.