Lift-type and drag-type hydro turbine with vertical axis for power generation from water pipelines

Highlights: • Lift-type and drag-type hydro turbine with vertical axis for power generation from water pipelines are designed. • Lift-type turbine has poorer startup performance but better power performance than drag-type turbine. • The reason of the startup performance of both the turbines are analyzed. • Both the turbines have reasonably low pressure loss. • Similar power coefficient and pressure loss characteristics are found with the same type wind turbine. -- Abstract: Pipeline turbines are designed to supply power for smart sensors installed in water pipelines. They are installed in the water supply pipe network directly and should meet the performance requirements for starting up at low flow rates and having low pressure loss at high flow rates. To this end, we designed two types of vertical axis pipeline turbines with lift-type runner and drag-type runner respectively, and conducted both experimental test and numerical simulations on the hydraulic performance of both the turbines. The results show that both the lift-type and drag-type turbines can meet the performance requirements. Under the same incoming flow conditions, the critical startup flow rate, the tip speed ratio, and the power coefficient of the lift-type turbine is larger. And the startup process of the lift-type turbine is unstable. While the drag-type turbine shows the opposite performances in these respects. In the range of incoming flow velocity studied, the pressure loss of both the turbines increases with the incoming flow velocity, however, the maximum pressure loss is controlled in an acceptable range, which will not affect the normal water supply.