Riaan Opperman is researching zero head hydro devices for his Masters project. His aim is to come up with a viable energy harvester using river flow alone. This energy can obviously be used for a variety of purposes, however pumping water is the most obvious! Many zero head hydro devices have been experimented with in the past ranging from underwater propellers to oscillating aerofoils etc etc however the one that looked particularly practical and promising was the helical pipe pump due mainly to its lack of wearng parts, ability to survive floating debris and its sheer simplicity. We had to build one!!
Pics show some of the assembly and initial trials. So far performance looks promising with approximately 450 litres per hour pumped to 10m head from a river flow of about 0.75m/s. More precise measurements to follow as well as performance tweaking...
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