A Review on the Development of Gravitational Water Vortex Power Plant as Alternative Renewable Energy Resources

International Conference on Materials Technology and Energy

Rahman, M.M.^1 ; Tan, J.H.^1 ; Fadzlita, M.T.^1 ; Wan Khairul Muzammil, A.R.^1

Material and Mineral Research Unit, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia^1

关键词: Environmental-friendly;    Generate electricity;    Green technology;    Hydraulic pressure;    Maximum Efficiency;    Physical geometry;    Power plant technology;    Renewable energy source;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/217/1/012007/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1757-899X/217/1/012007

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

Gravitational water vortex power plant is a green technology that generates electricity from alternative or renewable energy source. In the vortex power plant, water is introduced into a circular basin tangentially that creates a free vortex and energy is extracted from the free vortex by using a turbine. The main advantages of this type of power plant is the generation of electricity from ultra-low hydraulic pressure and it is also environmental friendly. Since the hydraulic head requirement is as low as 1m, this type of power plant can be installed at a river or a stream to generate electricity for few houses. It is a new and not well-developed technology to harvest electricity from low pressure water energy sources. There are limited literatures available on the design, fabrication and physical geometry of the vortex turbine and generator. Past researches focus on the optimization of turbine design, inlets, outlets and basin geometry. However, there are still insufficient literatures available for the technology to proceed beyond prototyping stage. The maximum efficiency obtained by the researchers are approximately 30% while the commercial companies claimed about 50% of efficiency with 500W to 20kW of power generated. Hence, the aim of this paper is to determine the gap in the vortex power plant technology development through past works and a set of research recommendations will be developed as efforts to accelerate the development of GWVPP.