Researchers at U of G are serving to to show small dams round Ontario into mini powerhouses pumping out renewable vitality, notably for rural customers.
Engineering professors Dave Lubitz, Bahram Gharabaghi and Graham Taylor are working with GreenBug Vitality Inc. primarily based in Delhi, Ont., to generate cost-effective inexperienced electrical energy from these dams.
With promising outcomes from one web site already, Lubitz says the workforce plans to take a look at “micro hydro energy” drawn from extra of the quite a few streams and rivers throughout the province and even the US.
They’re hundreds of small dams — with a “head” or water drop of solely about two to 6 metres — scattered throughout Ontario. The Grand River watershed alone accommodates some 800 dams, together with many candidates for micro hydro energy.
Micro hydro energy is measured in tens or a whole bunch of kilowatts, in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of kilowatts produced in Niagara Falls-sized energy vegetation.
The Guelph workforce is adapting a know-how developed by historical Greek mathematician Archimedes. The Archimedes screw is predicated on transferring water alongside the spiral threads of a big turning screw, an idea used for millennia for pumping irrigation water, says Lubitz.
Water flowing over a dam enters a channel containing a screw. The load of the falling water turns the screw, and the ensuing mechanical vitality is transformed to electrical energy.
The know-how may even assist fish transfer between water our bodies, says Gharabaghi. “It’s a approach to produce electrical energy however in an environmentally pleasant means.”
GreenBug linked with U of G’s Catalyst Centre (previously the Enterprise Growth Workplace) by way of Innovation Guelph downtown. By 2011, the corporate had already developed a working prototype, nevertheless it confronted many questions in scaling up the idea to a full set up.
What Lubitz thought could be “a enjoyable little mission” has develop into a research-intensive endeavor involving mechanics, physics of water circulation and optimization.
Regardless of the idea’s longevity, and its use immediately in plenty of European international locations, little is understood about constructing the very best Archimedes screw. How does the water transfer alongside the threads? How a lot potential vitality is misplaced to water motion? How huge to make the screw? How a lot energy is generated?
GreenBug’s first working web site — and the primary such web site within the Western Hemisphere, in response to CEO Tony Bouk — is positioned on a Waterford, Ont., horse farm and generates sufficient energy to assist run a part of a barn.
Utilizing discipline information from that set up, and quite a few lab dimension screws that have been run in a check rig on campus, Lubitz and his workforce have constructed fashions to elucidate and predict energy from any screw.
His investigations have led to extra unknowns. Methods to make greatest use of this know-how on small rivers whose circulation varies by season and even daily?
In Guelph’s Faculty of Engineering, Gharabaghi had already developed a instrument for assessing stream circulation charges, working with the Ontario Ministry of Pure Assets. By plugging in information a few specific watercourse, customers can design the fitting turbine for a selected location, he says. That’s additionally helpful info for acquiring obligatory provincial permits to refit present dams to generate electrical energy.
That’s all interesting to GreenBug, which seems to be to scale back engineering and allowing prices that may mount into a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} for a single set up. The U of G workforce hopes to assist streamline that course of and save as a lot as 40 per cent of these tender prices of growth.
Small-scale dams geared up with Archimedes generators may allow customers in rural Ontario to generate energy for one to a number of hundred households, says Gharabaghi.
Seeking to match designs for specific websites, Lubitz encountered different issues past stream circulation charges. It began to seem like the form of computational downside that Taylor confronts in learning neural networks and machine studying.
“You need to construct a custom-made screw, however there are such a lot of choices,” says Taylor. “This was much like the issue we face optimizing neural networks.”
All three Guelph engineers are actually working with GreenBug. The corporate, which gained the 2015 3M Environmental Innovation Award, expects to put in screws in Delhi and at a former mill in Rhode Island this yr, and is contemplating one other 10 websites round Ontario.
First Printed: Wednesday, March 30, 2016 — Characteristic by Andrew Vowles at http://information.uoguelph.ca/2016/03/engineeers-turn-small-dams-into-renewable-energy/
