Investigation of a Pico Turgo Turbine for High-Rise Buildings Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

Thailand is a rapidly developing country, and many high-rise buildings are being constructed to satisfy the demands of the increasing populace. The country is located in tropical South East Asia, which means it experiences abundant rainfall during the rainy season. The design of a hydropower system from a waterfall is re-invented in this study using rainwater flowing from the rooftop of a high-rise building to drive a Pico Turgo Turbine. In the building under study, the rooftop is restructured to receive and store 57.6 m3 of rainwater, which is allowed to flow down through a designed pipe of 21 m head to a Pico Turgo Turbine of 1 kW capacity. The turbine is fitted with four 10-mm-diameter nozzles that have a 17 angle of attack between the water jets and the buckets, a 430-mm runner diameter, and 21 buckets with a total capacity of 0.007 m3. The power generated by the device is analysed and compared with a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation under certain boundary conditions. The simulations use the k- turbulent flow model. The bucket is designed according to hydrodynamic theory and parameterised using Bezier polynomials. The theoretical calculation yields 1,310 W of electricity, the CFD simulation suggests 1,037 W, and the experimental result gives 950 W. The results are analysed according to the efficiency of output, with the CFD simulation representing 79.21% efficiency whereas the experimental result suggests 72.51% efficiency. The efficiency of the model is also investigated with respect to flow design and recommendations for future optimisation are presented.