Several rivers and streams are available in Africa and Asian regions with great potentials not applicable for constructing large hydropower dams but feasible for small and mini hydro generation. This study strive for investigating the impact of splitter blade on pump as turbine performance considering different speed and flow rates. Two specific centrifugal pump models one with six blades without splitter and another with four blades and four splitters were used for the study. The inlet diameter and outlet diameters of both impellers were 104 mm/116 mm, and 160 mm respectively at a designed flow rate Q = 12.5 m3/h, head H = 16 m, rotational speed n = 1450 rpm and efficiency of 56%, outlet impeller width of 0.006 m, a blade outlet angle of 30° was used for the study. CFD simulations were conducted with the use of k-ε turbulence model. The influence of splitter blade position on the performance of pump as turbine in the selected specific pumps with and without splitter blades has been investigated both experimentally and numerically at three different flow rates and rotational speed. The simulated data were in good agreement with the experimental results, the maximum deviation error between the CFD and test for each model are 5.6%, 2.6%, for the head and efficiency; 7.5% and 3.6% at different flow conditions.
Keywords: Pump as turbine; energy generation; flow distribution; numerical study; splitter blade.