An improved radial impulse turbine for OWC

Traditionally, wells turbines have been widely used in OWC plants. However, an alternative has been studied over recent years: a self-rectifying turbine known as an impulse turbine. We are interested in the radial version of the impulse turbine, which was initially proposed by M. McCormick. Previous research was carried out using CFD (FLUENT®), which aimed to improve knowledge of the local flow behavior and the prediction of the performance for this kind of turbine. This previous work was developed with a geometry taken from the literature, but now our goal is to develop a new geometry design with a better performance. To achieve this, we have redesigned the blade and vane profiles and improved the interaction between them by means of a new relation between their setting angles. Under sinusoidal flow conditions the new design improves the turbine efficiency by up to 5% more than the geometry proposed by Professor Setoguchi, in 2002. In this paper, the design criteria we have used is described, and the flow behavior and the performance of this new design are compared with the previous one.