mini hydro turbines

eratt2323

Hi all, Im looking for a hydro turbine but one small enough to incorporate into house hold plumbing (15mm/22mm), I intend to use the pressure from the system to power it, thus creating energy that could be stored in cells and work small electric appliances such as infra red sensors, can anybody tell me where I can find such a product????!!!!!

Tom.

gmgmgm

I'm sure there are some somewhere, but I seriously doubt they would be cost-effective in a domestic setting.

If this is for a household, you will have power somewhere, even if you need to use tiny PV panels or just a bank of batteries.

Chances are you will have some form of communication between the "appliances" so perhaps better to look at 1wire or power-over-ethernet (PoE) systems. You can hack your own PoE easily.

C_Mababejive

Think simple...get an old water pump or similar from a washing machine or indeed any kind of pump then simply use it in back to front mode to generate power. Would need some testing.. You couldnt use a ferrous metal pump due to corrosion. What about something automotive?

27col

I am curious as to how this turbine is supposed to work. It would obviously not rotate if just placed in a pipe full of static water.(The pressure would be the same both sides). It would therefore only work if the water was flowing. I do not know about the op, but in my house we use the absolute minimum of water since we went on to a meter. Therefore it might possibly produce a tiny amount of electricity occasionally. It seems to me to be a completely pointless idea. I do not know about other peoples set-ups. But my I/R sensors can run on one small battery a year. You could save much more energy by turning the room stat down 1 degree.

Igol

Actually its one of those ideas I too have been kicking around but linking it into the hotwater pipe of the woodburner which obviously powers itself.
I doubt it'd produce an awful lot of power thinking back to the old dynamo on my pushbike when I was a kid but its an interesting concept.
Give me 6 months and I'll be working out the figures for my OU course

DVardysShadow

Come on guys, laws of thermodynamics and stuff.

It goes wrong when you say "create energy". Of course energy can only be converted from one form to another. It cannot be created. So the energy you extract is from the pressure of pumping the water and if you want a decent amount of energy, you need to run a fair amount of water to waste. So for the energy you extract, you pay for the cost of pumping it, which represents the energy you extract, plus the cost of cleaning up the water to drinking standards.