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Project Proposal

Hydroelectric Turbine Generator

ME 340 Team B

Matthew Coleman Logan Hamilton

William DelGiorno

Executive Summary Non-renewable resources, in today’s day and age, are the most common way of producing energy to be converted into a usable power source. Recently, however, clean energy production from natural, renewable resources such as wind, water, and the sun have been rapidly increasing due to the growing costs of non-renewable energy sources. A faucet-powered hydroelectric generator is an example of clean energy solution, which provides free and efficient energy to the consumer. Team B’s faucet-powered hydroelectric generator will be an easily attachable device that fits right on the end of a faucet and converts the moving water from mechanical energy to the desired electrical energy. Other than the initial cost of the product, the consumer will not need to pay for anything else, since they are already paying for the water supply. The desired voltage generation will be greater than 1.5 volts across a 10 ohm resistor. This translates to a power output of .225 watts at the least. This power will be utilized by the female mating part of a plug, in which it can be used to plug into small devices such as phones, electric toothbrushes, etc. Team B is asking for funding of this project for research and development purposes. Team B is confident that this product will benefit both the customer AND the company.

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Table of Contents Executive Summary 1 Introduction 3 Problem Statement 3 Background Information 3 Customer Needs and Specifications 4 Identification of Customer Needs 4 Design Specifications and Weights 4 Concept Development 5 External Search 5 Problem Decomposition 5 Concept Generation 6 Concept Selection 7 System Level Design 8 Overall Description 8 Preliminary Theoretical Analysis 9 Conclusion 9 References 9 Appendices 10 Appendix A: Project Plan 10 Appendix B: Customer Needs/Weights 11 Appendix C: Attestation of Work 12

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Introduction Problem Statement Team B must develop a product that converts the mechanical energy of water flowing through a typical household faucet, to electrical energy, which can then be used to power some sort of small accessory designed within the product. The specific requirements of the product can be found below in the Customer Needs and Specifications section. On top of the customer needs, there are also constraints that must be met such as:

• Must choose 1 of the 5 DC motors available • A budget of $100 • Expelled water must be no less than 50% of original flow rate

Background Information In a world where almost every modern invention needs some sort of electrical power for the device to work, the cheapest, most efficient supply of this power is always desired. Hydroelectric power is used all over the world, most commonly produced from dams. Dams are basically a giant version of what Team B is asked to create. Whenever there is some sort of water flow or pressure differential, power can be obtained. Dam turbines utilize the viscous flow and pressure of the water, and turn it into electrical power with no remnants of pollution or harmful discharge. The same process occurs for a faucet-powered generator but on a much smaller scale. The water from the faucet creates the pressure and velocity necessary to spin the miniature turbine, which creates the electrical power from the DC motor. Project Planning  Team B chose to follow Dr. Eric Mockensturm’s ME 340 class notes to develop a process and plan of attack to figure out the most efficient way to build this hydroelectric generator. We first developed a Gantt chart (Appendix A) to plan each stage of the design process for the 15 weeks we have to develop the product.. Research was then executed to find information regarding turbines, water properties, and electrical properties. We then constructed the customer needs weighted by importance so we could figure out what our product needs to be achieve (i.e. looks, performance), so we performed a survey to gather this data. Once the importance of each need was figured out, each member drew concepts. Utilizing our weighted customer needs for each concept, a final concept was chosen, and a SolidWorks base model was created of that design.  

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Table 1: Weighted Survey Results

Customer Needs and Specifications Identification of Customer Needs The requirements in the project description are as follows:

• Retail cost cannot exceed $50 • Must have a 3/8-18 NPS internal pipe thread at inflow and outflow • Discharge must be vertically downward • Total length must not exceed 4 inches • Product must be self-contained • Generator may not come into contact with any water

The project description gave us not only physical requirements that must be met, as stated above, but customer needs that make the desire of the product increase much more if met. The needs that are addressed are the performance of the product, the cost, aesthetics, and the products ease of use. Design Specifications and Weights We wanted a systematic and fair way to determine the weights of the 4 customer needs mentioned above, so we decided to survey 10 college students. The potential customer base is basically anyone who uses a sink so these students fall into this category and their opinion can be used. The survey question used was to rank each of the 4 needs (performance, cost, aesthetics, ease of use) from 1-4 with 4 being the most important and 1 being the least important. The actual survey results with the customers’ decisions can be found in Appendix B but the final weight results were:

The majority of the surveyors, as expected, ranked performance and cost, most important. These are quantitative values that the potential customer can easily look up, we want to focus most of our design on these two specifications. Ease of use came in third. Since we are hoping this is a one-time installation, we won’t have to focus too much of our time on that aspect. Aesthetics came in last, and while we will try and make this product look as visually appealing as possible, this specification will be the last of our worries.

Survey Weight Results Needs Weight

Performance 34% Cost 29% Aesthetics 15% Ease of Use 22%

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Figure 2: Patent USD681552 S1

Figure 3: Patent US8125096 B2

Water  In.low   Turbine   Generator   Power  

output  

Volumetric Flow Rate

Figure 1: Pelton Turbine

Concept Development External Search On our initial searches, we discovered that there were two main types of turbines: impulse turbines and reaction turbines. Impulse turbines use the velocity of the water that comes in contact with it to spin the turbine. Impulse turbines work best in higher head applications. The pelton turbine (shown to the right) is the most widely used of the different types

of impulse turbines. A pelton turbine has spoon like blades that catch the water coming in from the nozzle, which helps it spin and output more power. Reaction turbines combines water flow and water pressure in order to output power. Unlike impulse turbines, reaction turbines work better in low head applications. The most common reaction turbine is a propeller. Propellers have blades that are always in contact with water and has a constant pressure as to keep everything in balance. While researching for our design our team also looked at some other designs that have already been patented. The first patent we came across was US D681552 S1. This particular design is a micro-hydro electrical generator that uses a pelton turbine to generate power. This is a relatively simple design. The water flows in at the bottom, goes through a nozzle, and

proceeds to hit the pelton turbine to generate power. Another patent that we benefited from was US 8125096 B2. This design uses a Kaplan turbine which is a type of propeller. The Kaplan turbine allows for adjustable blades which provide a wider range of action. This particular Kaplan turbine was designed to operate at around 90% efficiency and is able to produce anywhere from 100 kW to 700 kW of power. This may be due to the fact that this design has a complex belt system to help generate power. Problem Decomposition The first step our team took in generating our concepts was to create the black box of the system we wanted to develop.   Torque and Power Voltage and

current

Figure 4: Black Box Model

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Concept Generation Before our team even started coming up with designs we went over the project specifications and customer needs so we could generate designs suited to those details. Next, we started to sketch some rough designs in our journals. We all decided that we should each come up with one final design. We then surveyed ten college students to see how our criteria would be weighted. The final weighted results can be seen in Table 1. Our final step was to take the weighted survey and our designs and combine them to form our weighted concept-ranking table to make our final decision (Table can be found in Appendix C). Here are our three concepts:

Concept A

Concept B

Figure 5: Concept A full view Figure 6: Concept A component view

Figure 7: Concept B side view Figure 8: Concept B front view

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Concept C

Concept A: Has the water flow hit the turbine that is directly connected to the DC motor. The DC motor generates power and is connected to an outlet. Concept B: The water flows through the nozzle to hit the pelton turbine. The pelton turbine is directly connected to the DC motor which is off to the side. Concept C: This design is basically Concept B but with two turbines and two motors. This was put in to hopefully double the output power. Concept Selection For the concept-ranking table we scored each design on a 1-3 scale (1 being the worst and 3 being the best) for each category. For example we gave Concept C a 1 on cost because it would involve us purchasing two motors and 3D printing two turbines. The rest of the scores can be found in the concept-ranking table in Appendix C. After reviewing our concept-ranking table Concept B came out with the highest score. Concept B ended up on top because of its projected low cost and its ease of use. This design would be the easiest for the customer to set up while also being aesthetically pleasing. Lastly, the nozzle on Concept B will increase the velocity of the water allowing the turbine to spin faster.

Figure 9: Concept C front, side, and back view

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System Level Design Overall Description

Above we have our basic structure of how our assembly is going to be modeled. As seen it is a simple, yet compact assembly keeping our cost of production down. A water wheel turbine is used such that it can catch and trap a good amount of the flow, yet still allows it to pass somewhat evenly through the output, which was a requirement in the problem statement. With this basic concept we also utilized a flow promoter at the bottom to help feed out our water directly to the output. In all, we feel as though it is a design that is easy to maintain, has educational value with the clear casing, and will be appealing on the shelf to the end consumer.

Motor (2.5V)

Faucet connector

Turbine

Faucet connector

Fiberglass casing

Figure 10: CAD drawing of design

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Preliminary Theoretical Analysis The motor we chose is a 2.5V DC motor (2200 RPM). This is one of the lighter motors yet still has the best efficiency out of our given choices. Being lighter it will be the easiest to rotate with our smaller lightweight turbine. Predicted efficiency of motor: knowing our max values of the selected motor we can use them at 50% efficiency to predict output values. Predicted power from flow rate and turbine: P = torque * angular velocity Based off this simple equation for power using our max values for our motor, we found that we could come across a max power of 0.0744 N-m/s. Because this is max power and we are hoping to get efficiency in our motor of about 50%, we move change our predicted power output to 0.037 N-m/s.

Conclusion We have made it through the beginning phases of the design process. We first considered the project specifications and the customer needs, which lead to us coming up with criteria that we used in our concept selection process. A survey was then given to our peers so we could correctly weight these criteria for the concept-ranking table. We then started to do some external research on other hydroelectric turbine generators. From there we came across a few patented designs that we used in our concept generation. Each of us then came up with one design to put into our concept-ranking table. When Concept B came out on top, we began to start our CAD drawings on Solidworks. We believe that our design will attract customers because of its simplicity and ease of use. It will be small and able to fit to an ordinary residential faucet. Customers looking for a little extra power for their phone or toothbrush in the bathroom or to be a little more eco-friendly will be interested in this product. Since our design is simple and compact, it will most likely come out cheaper than many of our competitor’s designs. We would like to continue in our design process and see this project through to the end.

References [1] "Energy.gov." Types of Hydropower Turbines. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Mar. 2014.

<http://energy.gov/eere/water/types-hydropower-turbines>. [2] Bentley, Roy E. Micro-hydro Electric Generator. Roy E. Bentley, assignee. Patent US

D681552. 7 May. 2013. Print. [3] Shifrin, Salvatore, and Joseph Shifrin. Hydor Turbine Generator. Salvatore Shifrin,

Joseph Shifrin, assignee. Patent US 8125096 B2. 28 Feb. 2012. Print.

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Appendices Appendix A: Project Plan

Table 2. Gantt Chart updated as of 3/5/14

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Appendix B: Customer Needs/Weights  

Criteria   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   Total   Weight  High  Performance  

4   1   4   3   4   3   4   4   3   4   34   .34  

Low  Cost   3   2   3   2   3   4   2   3   4   3   29   .29  Aesthetics   1   4   1   1   1   2   1   1   1   2   15   .15  Ease  of  Use   2   3   2   4   2   1   3   2   2   1   22   .22  

Criteria   A   B   C   Weighting  High  Performance  

2   2   3   .34  

Low  Cost   2   3   1   .29  Aesthetics   2   3   2   .15  Ease  of  Use   2   2   2   .22  Totals   2.00   2.44   2.05   1  

Table 3. 10-person customer survey to determine weights

Table  4.    Concept  Ranking  Table  to  determine  final  concept  

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Appendix C: Attestation of Work William DelGiorno My primary contribution to this proposal document was basically everything previous to the Concept Development section. Some other things in this document that was done by me include the Gantt chart, the customer survey table, and the concept-ranking table. Concept C was also my own idea and drawing. Matthew Coleman My main contribution was writing up everything in the concept development part of the project. I also completed a few other parts of this document including the Table of Contents, Conclusion, and References sections. Lastly, I helped put the document together by labeling the figures, tables, and page numbers. I came up with Concept B. Logan Hamilton My primary work consisting in the document is part four. I took our drawing and designed the basic solid works model our group is going to work from. Along with this, I also calculated predicted values for how efficiently our motor can run and what kind of output we can generate. As with the rest of the group I also contributed to the editing of our proposal to narrow effectively utilize the number of pages. Concept A was my drawing and idea. By signing this document we all attest that it provides an accurate representation of our individual efforts in the completion of this work Date:______________ Member Name Printed:_______________ Signature:______________________ Member Name Printed:_______________ Signature:______________________ Member Name Printed:_______________ Signature:______________________