A municipality receiving its water supply from a high elevation spring sought to replace an energy wasting pressure reducing valve with a hydro turbine. MSI was tasked with designing the turbine to capture power over a challenging range of operating conditions.
A Francis style hydro turbine was chosen as a design normally well-suited for varying flows, but generally less effective with variations in head pressure. The challenge was to come up with a single turbine capable of high efficiency for both current and future head conditions.
MSI's custom-designed Francis style hydro turbine predicted excellent performance over a wide range of operating conditions
After extensive iterative design and analysis consisting of finite element analysis (FEA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), MSI developed a runner with high efficiency across the operating range of head and flow pressures. Cavitation was also a concern, given the wide operating range. The model predicted cavitation would not be a problem, and the turbine performed as expected.
The runner performed as expected with high efficiency and without cavitation
