Experimental investigation and numerical simulation of an inline low‐head microhydroturbine for applications in water pipelines.

The excess hydraulic pressure in water supply network pipes is one of the major problems in design and implementation stages of these projects. To reduce the excess pressure and maintain network safety, a variety of pressure reducing valves are used, which waste all the excess pressure. However, having used the appropriate water microturbines, while reducing the pressure loss to an optimum value, the system could recover the wasted energy. In this study, numerical simulation and experimental investigation of microturbine in a water supply system have been performed to evaluate the electrical power generation capacity of an over‐pressured network. The numerical simulation of the microturbine was conducted using Ansys‐Fluent software. The microturbine has been experimentally investigated with different inlet flow rates, the effect of different post‐microturbine heads and also the effect of different opening angles of guide plate on its performance, three different scenarios were defined. Based on numerical simulation and laboratory results, the best performance of the microturbine was obtained when the inlet flow rate was 0.01184 m3 /s and also opening angle 20° for the guide plate, in which the microturbine output was equal to 59.01 W. The generated power by the microturbine can meet the electrical needs of sensors and other network monitoring equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]