Experimental investigation of miniature bladeless energy harvester driven by air and water

• Main Author: Khoo, Sane Joe.
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54082
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This final year project focuses on building three miniature Bladeless turbines of different sizes, 40 mm rotor disc, 80 mm rotor disc and 120 mm rotor disc. Different working fluids, mainly compressed air and water, will be examined in order to determine the efficiency of the Bladeless turbine. Design considerations are essential in ensuring safety issues are addressed. The material used by the turbine has to ensure any failure in the disc within the compressed environment will be contained within the chamber. Sidewalls of the turbine should always be intact and proper fasteners with appropriate threads have to be used. Power output will be produced by a self-built generator. It is fabricated using copper wires coil around a stator and the magnet serves as the rotor connected to the turbine shaft. Open loop voltage will be measured using a multimeter and power output can then be calculated with the known internal resistance of the copper wire. The generator will also be connected to resistors to identify the maximum power generated in a closed loop. Several experiments will be conducted to find out the best configuration of the turbine so that maximum efficiency can be achieved. Parameter to be examined including the size of the rotor disc, number of exhaust ports on the sidewalls, number of exhaust holes on the rotor discs, number of rotor discs and inter disc spacing. For air driven turbine, compressed air pressure of 50, 100, 150 and 200kPa will be used for the 5 experiments. On the other hand, water driven turbine only uses one specified pressure by placing the water tank in different height level. By performing various experiments, this project aims to maximise the efficiency of the Bladeless turbine with different working fluids. This turbine may be installed to aircraft where high speed air flow is available or below a dam where rushing torrent is available.