The effect of orifice diameter on the water vortex turbine performance by numerical method.

The Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources states that 2% of Indonesia's total population of around 5.2 million Indonesians do not have access to electricity. Most of these people live in remote areas – areas located far away from the district center with low-income civilians. Indonesia has a large potential for renewable energy sources, one of which is water energy. The potential of water energy in Indonesia is 46 GW which is divided into 3 classes - large, medium, and small capacity. For remote areas, small capacity is widely used and suitable as it requires small space to be installed and is classified into mini, micro, and pico. The process of converting water energy into electrical energy is done using water turbines. One example of water turbines is a vortex turbine. Vortex Turbine is a new type of pico-hydro turbine utilizing basin to form a natural vortex phenomenon. Water Vortex Energy can be harnessed to produce Electrical Energy by turning the Water Vortex Turbine. This study focuses on the effect of orifice diameter and blade depth installation on the performance of the Water Vortex Turbine. The orifice diameter and blade depth installation were varied based on Mulligan's Ratio which spans from 0.14-0.18 for orifice-basin ratio and 0.1-0.3 for blade depth installation-basin height ratio. Computational Study was conducted using ANSYS CFD Fluent to analyze fluid flow as it passes through the basin and strikes the blades. The Straight-typed blade was utilized. It was found that the maximum efficiency of 56% is obtained when the Orifice-Basin ratio is 0.14 with optimum turbine angular velocity at 300. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]