Design and analysis of a hydro-powered water turbine pump: a sustainable irrigation infrastructure

The agriculture sector of Nepal has been plagued by problems of poor irrigation networks and infrastructure. This has forced farmers to use fuel and electricity-based pumps, which are both expensive and unsustainable. The problems related to the distribution of power and fluctuating voltages add to the ineffectiveness of the electrical pumping system. So, as a better alternative for environment-friendly and inexpensive irrigation infrastructure, this paper proposes a design methodology of a community-operated hydro-powered pump called water turbine pump (WTP). Although introduced in the 1920s, this technology has been largely ignored nowadays. Moreover, there are insufficient literature and technical documentation to support the design decisions for developers. With an objective to induce momentum in the research and development of this technology, this work presents a well-defined methodology to design a WTP using a propeller turbine directly coupled with a centrifugal pump, in reference to a site located in Bardiya, Nepal. The WTP designed using this methodology could utilize a head of 3 m and a flow rate of 150 lps to deliver 14 lps of water to a height of 14.9 m, yielding a head ratio of 1:5, with an overall efficiency of 50.5%.

Critical Hydraulic Eccentricity Estimation in Vertical Turbine Pump Impeller to Control Vibration

In many applications, pumps are tested against standard specifications to define the maximum allowable vibration amplitude limits of a pump. It is essential to identify the causes of vibration and methods to attenuate the same to ensure the safe and satisfactory operation of a pump. Causes of vibration can be classified mainly into mechanical and hydraulic nature. Respective unbalance masses are the two major factors which cause dynamic effects and excitation forces leading to undesirable vibrations. In this paper, the procedure of vibration magnitude measurement of a vertical turbine pump at site and the process of dynamic balancing to measure mechanical unbalance of an impeller are explained. After that, the impact of hydraulic eccentricity on the vibration displacement of a vertical turbine pump has been explained using numerical simulation procedure based on “One-way Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI).” The experimental results from a pump at site are used to compare the numerical results. After the solver validation, the one-way FSI approach is used to find the critical hydraulic eccentricity magnitude of a vertical turbine pump impeller to limit the vibration magnitudes on motor component to less than 100 μm. From the numerical simulations, it is deduced that the critical hydraulic eccentricity should be limited to 400 μm in X and Y direction. The process can be used as a guideline procedure for limiting the hydraulic unbalance in vertical turbine pumps by limiting the hydraulic eccentricity.

BLADE PARTS COMBINED PROCESSING AT HIGH-SPEED ROTOR DEVELOPMENT

Technological problems arising at high-speed rotor balancing in turbine pump units are considered. There are shown their operation conditions of work in view of working surface softening against an extraneous technological heredity in the areas of metal removeall. The ways for the improvement of rotor technological development processes with the use of the methods of local finish-strengthening combined processing.