I've been doing a lot of research in to methods of pumping water that do not require electricity. I've got a nice river running through my property and ultimately would like to set up a microhydro turbine and produce some electricity.

The problem I have is that the river has steep banks, and it lays in a fairly level area. I mean the elevation difference (i.e. "head") along my 500 feet of river is (I'm guessing) somewhere on the order of one foot.

So I can't really divert water upstream and get a good height on it.

Such a river tends to flood where floodstage could be about 10 feet over low flow stage. So water wheel type systems tend to be too difficult. Something as large as an entire tree can come floating by during flood stage, and that would be a challenge for most any water wheel. I will also have problems with ice sheets floating by in springtime. And a waterwheel would be too large to remove each Autumn.

So I am hoping to pump water up hill (about 30 foot elevation above the river, but I've not measured it out yet) to a pond and then drive my hydro turbine from that.

My idea is to use the force of the water flowing in the river to pump the water up the hill. I've not attempted to measure the "flow" of this river, but let's just say I laughed when I read about taking a 5 gallon pail and timing how long it takes to fill. In my case, there's almost always a part of the river as deep as such a pail, and if you could weight it with rocks, it would fill instantly. I mean the time is what it takes you to overcome the pail trying to float. Not waiting for water to come and fill it.

If I can get about 20,000 gallons per hour up to 35 feet, then I could generate 1000 watts all Summer long. Which would be almost exactly my usage. Initially, I'm just hoping for 200 or 300 watts.

By making a pond up on the hill, I am free to try various means of filling it. And if I install the right sized turbine, I could use significantly less water as I get started with it, and gradually add further improvements to fill my pond faster.

I'm a good Google searcher and have the following ideas so far:

solar pump
Windmill pump
spiral pump
pulser pump
and Archimedes screw
I've also read about ram pumps, but again you need head for them to work well.

Some of these approaches incorporate air into the water stream, and these air pockets would not be good for a turbine. So the pond gives me a buffer zone to store potential energy for later, or to bring things back to a steady stream of water.

Each has it's advantges and disadvantages.

I've also read about pipe friction losses and "in stream" low head turbines, but even they need about 5 feet of head to operate.

Basically, I'm looking for ways to trade a high flow for a greater height for a small fraction of the water.

My other idea is to put a barrel up 30 feet in a tree down at the river and run a single pipe up the hill to the pond for filling. As the barrel fills, the pressure difference will fill the pond. So then any mechanism down at the river can be used to fill the barrel. And yes, I could just use the barrel to take the air out. But at 20,000 gallons per hour, you'd need a barrel full of water every 10 seconds.

So I've been thinking about cycling the turbine on and off as my pond fills and empties. But doesn't appear they are really designed to be used in this way. To avoid using batteries, I'm considering just taking an A/C unit out of my home electric circuit and it seems to cycle on for about 6 minutes and then cut out for about 10 or 15 min. Thus leaving time to fill the pond again. My home has two A/C units. One for each half of the house. So I'd still have the other working normally. I realize I'll have to overcome the heavy load as the unit kicks on. Hoping I can use a capacitor rather then a battery. Or get a slow start compressor. For that matter, I could use an open drive compressor and use the water to drive the compressor! And incorporate some landscaping and have a nice cascading waterfall back down to the river.

I've also thought about a siphon "pump". But I'm having difficulty picturing how to get some portion of the water to exit at the top of the hill and yet not allow enough air in the line to break the siphon vacuum.

Any ideas on other approaches? Anyone have any experience working with river power?

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Might not be too practical in your case but I just watched a program on how English canal operators used to pump water up hills in old times. They used steam power to shift upto 5 tons of water on each pump stroke. Some pumps have been in use for +200 years.You would need a good source of fuel for the boiler!

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I think the problem you are going to face is that mechanical pumps tend to be quite low in energy efficiency terms. Then you are going to add the inefficiency of the turbine/generator. The bottom line is that you will use more energy pumping the water up the hill then you will generate when it comes back down again.

An example is using a solar panel to drive an inefficient pump then an inefficient turbine. You would be better off just using the power from the panel directly without taking the losses.

With such a small head, even a hydraulic ram isn't going to be of much use.

You can find in stream turbines don't need any head, they rely on flow. The faster the river flows, the more energy you can extract per unit area of turbine. A slow river will need a large turbine to generate anything signifícant, but a fast flowing river maybe a possibility. They are not as efficient as weired installations though.

Have a look here and the rest of that site may be of interest to you as well.

Something that is not mentioned, but I have considered myself a few times is using a parabolic reflector tracking the sun to act as the heat source for a Stirling engine.

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Certainly, yes, you can can't get something for nothing. So a steam pump would work, but it would be more efficient to use it to heat my home and turn a generator in a dual use arrangement.

That was what was behind the need for it to be water powered (I mistakenly threw solar and wind in there as well).

I'm picturing something that turns in the water, but doesn't require a building or large concrete mount etc. like a 10 foot waterwheel would require. Something that would float on top of the water so it won't get floated out, and tend to just bounce off a large piece of debris floating by. And that wouldn't be so expensive or difficult to build that I couldn't just make another readily.

Unfortunately, low head means the speed of my river is rather low most of the time as well. I was surprised that my float test showed 12-15 seconds to go about 50 feet. That's only about half a mile per hour. At the time flow was low and my float often got caught in eddies and slower areas. Today the river is up about 5 feet due to a sudden rain, and it's going at least 3 MPH. And there are no slow areas :)

I just found another spiral pump, so you may not have found the one I intended on a search. I'm picturing something like this or this. Perhaps I should have used the term Wirtz pump. More here. I'm having trouble finding an appropriate rotating coupling. There is only one company that I've found which offers these for sale, and they are rather expensive. They call it a sling pump.

I guess the other style I've read about is called a rope pump. It basically uses a precision fit cup to bring water up a tube.

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Hmm, odd, I thought I'd replied, but can't see my post - ah well.

I am with you now.

My first thoughts for that rotating connector was a garden hose reel. The thing that connects to a tap, but allows you to pull out and roll back the length of the hose onto a drum. That must have a rotary connector, and they operate at mains water pressure without leaking, so must be pretty tough. Of course, they are not rotating the whole time, so I don't know what the mean time between failure would be if in continuous use. They don't cost a lot.

Another item with such a coupling is a fire hose. If you can find a demolition site of a suitable structure, you may be able to source one of those for free. It is more likely to be of large diameter then the garden hose.

Just a couple of thoughts.

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Do you have the right to build a weir?

My understanding of a weir is that it is a leaky dam, but one that leaks in the place of your choosing.

It sounds as if you have enough water moving through your property to accomplish your goal of generating electricity, the problem being that the stream is too shallow and to slow to be useful. That is, the energy source is inconveniently diffuse.

With a weir, you could concentrate the flow to a cross sectional area of a few square feet, which might make a ram pump (or something like that) feasible.

Stray trees and ice sheets would be accompanied by enough water that the whole thing would overflow anyway, so that might not be a problem.

I'm not a hydraulics engineer or anything of the sort, I'm just tossing another idea into the mix in hope that it might prove of some value to you.

If you google "weir" the first two hits are highly relevant to your situation.

Good luck with this project!

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I believe my right to build a weir exceeds my ability to devise one that would survive being under 5-10 feet of water at Spring flood / exceptional rain stage. I wish the lay of the river would allow you to divert a small aquaduct of water off to the side the way all the websites show you to do. But most of the time, the water with 5 feet below the banks, so such a diversion would have to be 5 feet higher somewhere. I'm guessing that could be as much as a mile away.

Hence, trying to find ways to use the force of the water in the river to pump small amounts to a height that might be feasible for a turbine.

Another approach I am looking in to is a syphon pump. If you Google "pulser pump" you will find the same guy has published the information in several formats. He always seems to leave specific details out of the description. Also no data on optimizing the pipe sizes and flow rate required. So I decided to just make one my self and tinker until it works. Here is a link to his coffee jar animation

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More rotary seals if you were to continue in that direction.

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you said you were wary of debris coming into your water pump, i would suppose you already thought of putting screens and bars in front of the intake to block large and medium size debris from entering your pump. Some of the electricity you are generating could be used to power some rotating screens that would dump the debris onto a belt that would come over to land and dump into a pile or a container for later removal. These screens wouldn't have to rotate all the time, just once a day more less depending on whats coming down the waterway.

you have to remove the water wheel if there was one during the winter due to what?
i didn't exactly follow that. the other ideas are very interesting.

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I finally found numerous appropriate couplings, and also read that the brass garden hose quick connectors work reasonably well, so I will probably start there. I found that the definitive term seems to be "Swivel Joints" rather then the "rotating coupling" and "spinning nipple" terms I've seen in articles.

The reason to remove during Winter is that I live in Minnesota, and it will get cold enough at some point every Winter that the river will completely freeze over. In the Spring this year the ice sheets were a foot thick and were dislodged by rising Spring flow. I don't believe for my home use the device will stand up to that. And if I must first pump water up the hill to a pond before running down to turbine, then I know the whole thing will eventually freeze (because I don't plan to professionally trench the pipes below frost level). So it will be best to drain all the pipes before Winter freeze.

Yes, I've read about the need for a "trash rack" up stream from the device. The rotating screen is a great idea. Perhaps I could devise a way to again use the flow of the water to power slow movement of the screen.

You see the river bottom is very sandy. In fact it shifts like sand dunes every time the water comes up. So, if the entire apperatus (gosh I've been reading too many patents!) floated on top of the current water level and were anchored via cabling to trees on each bank, that would be ideal.

In fact I was considering making a break-away assembly of some kind. If something large comes along and knocks it really hard, the cables break and the thing is then free to float downstream until flowing past the backup. Hopefully by then the pivot of the machine and variation in currents will have caused the obsticle to move passed, and the machine survives, although is no longer functioning.

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this device is getting more and more complicated by the moment!
Oh! so you live in deep freeze land! well that explains alot.

if you have a natural down stream flow, why not funnel that into chute of sorts and into a 'turbine' of sorts, sort of like a inline hyrdo dam turbine as such.
then anchor this device like you were talking below between two trees and have lines come off it to the shore to send you the power from the turbine and its power generator. Then have a onshore 'booster' as such to raise the weak electrical current up to something you can use.

this device if you could create it would be able to handle small debris and sand without any trouble and could also break away if something big hit it. then just a transformer of some size to boost the current.

hows that for an idea?

btw...ex-washington state person here. i don't know the big deep freeze you are talking about personally but i can imagine it.

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Yes, they call these "run of river" turbines. Their main drawback is they don't produce much power. Even a Colorado torrent might only generate about 200 watts. And my river flows much smoother (usually). This is because of how flat it is... hence no head for the turbine to capture. I'd have to guess I'd only get 50 watts or so off such a device because I think I've got only about 12 inches of elevation difference.

Except during floodstage, the chute and turbine would have to be in the riverbed. And so eventual destruction is virtually assured.

Yes, once you overcome all the other hurdles you have to handle the power you get from it. Shunt load, possibly battery bank, inverter, transformers, controllers, it goes on and on. I plan for my shunt load to be an electric pump to move water back up to the top of the hill. It's better then burning up the power in to heat... during the Summer! A shunt load is used to balance the turbine load with the current flow. It basically keeps the turbine from spinning too fast when there is no other electrical load on it. Getting water back to the top of the hill in my pond is basically like storing power in a battery. Allowing me to use it in the future.

For now I am focused on arranging for the water at height. Then will actually measure my flow rates and have an idea how much more I might get by doubling the workings the next year or redesign etc. Then I'll have some real figures to base an appropriate turbine purchase on (the main investment dollars).

Until then, I'll have a wondering, cascading stream back down to the river, all with zero CO2 and "free" energy. (begin study of proper construction of manmade river on steep hill here, and of course, mine is different because it won't be reusing the same water repeatedly).

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to bad you couldn't create some sort of temporary barrier to create a damn of sorts that you could take out when it freezes over. sounds to me like your losing a bit of electrical power pumping water back up stream.

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humm i know this is going to sound some what of a wise remark but have you considered useing a small water wheel to drive a Archamiedes Screw to drive the water up to your pond? After all the ancient greeks did this like 2000 years ago? You wouldnt need a large water wheel at all to drive the Screw and you were already mentioning needing ot put a screen and Rigging to protect the intakes

Charlie

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humm i know this is going to sound some what of a wise remark but have you considered useing a small water wheel to drive a Archamiedes Screw to drive the water up to your pond? After all the ancient greeks did this like 2000 years ago? You wouldnt need a large water wheel at all to drive the Screw and you were already mentioning needing ot put a screen and Rigging to protect the intakes

Charlie

now why didn't i think of a screw for moving water to mention to him...lol
thats a good idea, i see that here in the antwerp area for when they are moving water and debris from the lower freeway drainage up the hill to the pump and filtering station for drainage back into the river. difference is, it is a open air screw system in a concrete trough vs an enclosure.
more like this

you can read the wiki article with its mathmatics at the bottom of the page here

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Yes, I've been looking in to the Archamiedes Screw. I've read they are best for short heights. But I would need to travel some oh maybe 120-150 feet long and up about 35 feet in elevation to reach my target pond (making several at lower elevations is another thought). It sounds rather expensive for such a screw and the channel for it to run in.

And I have no idea where I would find a screw that long, nor was I comfortable with the math to have confidence it would actually work at the incline I'd have and available torque from the river. Especially since I don't have a great way to measure or estimate torque until I actually build the wheel.

So, I got to thinking that I might be able to apply the concept behind the screw using a closed system. And that is basically what the spiral pump is about. The materials to build one are more ordinary.

I've devised an approach that let's me build a spiral pump and try a given diameter loop, and later revise it to be larger without a complete rebuild. Works on paper anyway. So then it is just a matter of how far up the hill it will get the water, and whether adding more loops to the sprial or increasing the diameter will reach the desired height, or if another pumping stage is required.

I'm planning to use plastic soda bottles for the water fins (sliced open at an angle, discard the bottom). The darn things are nearly indistructable, so should wear well and be fairly resistent to debris in the water. And if one is crushed or breaks off... well, the replacement doesn't cost anything!

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I should note that my spiral pump will be nowhere near the scale of the one I linked to. I was just trying to document the concept if you were curious.

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I said earlier in the thread that I had thought of using a parabolic sun tracker to serve as the heat source for a Stirling engine. It would appear that others have had that thought already, and a German company sells such a product, (site was in German), but also the US government has cottoned onto the possibility.

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Conceptual illustration of future Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion plant by Ocean Power Plant. Such plants would generate electric power that could be used to make hydrogen and fresh water. Other potential ancillary activities could include aquaculture, deep sea mining and even rocket launch services.

An MIT researcher has a vision: Four hundred huge offshore wind turbines are providing onshore customers with enough electricity to power several hundred thousand homes, and nobody standing onshore can see them. The trick? The wind turbines are floating on platforms a hundred miles out to sea, where the winds are strong and steady.

ocean