Design and Analysis of In-Pipe Hydro-Turbine for an Optimized Nearly Zero Energy Building

Muhammad Shahbaz Aziz; Muhammad Adil Khan; Harun Jamil; Faisal Jamil; Alexander Chursin; Do-Hyeun Kim

doi:10.3390/s21238154

Design and Analysis of In-Pipe Hydro-Turbine for an Optimized Nearly Zero Energy Building

Sensors (Basel). 2021 Dec 6;21(23):8154. doi: 10.3390/s21238154.

Authors

Muhammad Shahbaz Aziz¹, Muhammad Adil Khan^{1

2}, Harun Jamil³, Faisal Jamil⁴, Alexander Chursin⁵, Do-Hyeun Kim⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Air University Islamabad, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan.
² School of Automation, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China.
³ Department of Electronic Engineering, Jeju National University, Jeju-si 63243, Korea.
⁴ Department of Computer Engineering (and Research Center of Advance Technology), Jeju National University, Jeju-si 63243, Korea.
⁵ Institute of Applied Technical and Economic Research and Expert Assessment, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), Miklukho-Maklaya St., 117198 Moscow, Russia.

Abstract

Pakistan receives Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI) exceeding 2000 kWh/m²/annum on approximately 83% of its land, which is very suitable for photovoltaic production. This energy can be easily utilized in conjunction with other renewable energy resources to meet the energy demands and reduce the carbon footprint of the country. In this research, a hybrid renewable energy solution based on a nearly Zero Energy Building (nZEB) model is proposed for a university facility. The building in consideration has a continuous flow of water through its water delivery vertical pipelines. A horizontal-axis spherical helical turbine is designed in SolidWorks and is analyzed through a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis in ANSYS Fluent 18.1 based on the K-epsilon turbulent model. Results obtained from ANSYS Fluent have shown that a 24 feet vertical channel with a water flow of 0.2309 m³/s and velocity of 12.66 m/s can run the designed hydroelectric turbine, delivering 168 W of mechanical power at 250 r.p.m. Based on the turbine, a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) comprising photovoltaic and hydroelectric power is modelled and analyzed in HOMER Pro software. Among different architectures, it was found that architecture with hydroelectric and photovoltaic energy provided the best COE of $0.09418.

Keywords: computational fluid dynamics; energy efficiency; energy management; hybrid renewable energy system; in-pipe hydro-turbine; nearly Zero Energy Building; optimization.