Pumped storage hydro (PSH) is a mature and widely used energy storage technique. The hydraulic dissipation of PSH will lead to the decline of power station efficiency. Therefore, it is important to find the reasons flow energy dissipation (FED). The adjustment of the flow channel will cause the change of flow energy dissipation. Guide vane is an important component of pump turbine, which has an influence on the problems of FED. In this paper, the FED in pump turbine with two guide vane profiles are analyzed. The combination of experimental method and numerical simulation method is adopted. Through experiments, the influence of two guide vane profiles on performance is clarified, and the method to judge the severity of Q-H instability is proposed. The FED under different working conditions were analyzed by entropy production. When the flow rate is at design point, the wake and local small flow separation causes FED. When the flow rate is large, FED is caused by the strong wake and flow separation in the runner. When the flow is small, the complex flow pattern in guide vane and back-flow cause high FED. The guide vane profiles have a great influence on FED. The match of blade leading edge and flow direction and flow control ability of guide vane affect the flow state caused the variation of FED. 

Influence of guide vane profile on the flow energy dissipation in a reversible pump-turbine at pump mode

The pump mode of hydro-pneumatic energy storage (HPES) system often experiences off-design conditions due to the boundary pressure rises, and the resultant energy conversion instability has an adverse effect on the system operation. However, the evolutionary process of this instability and the corresponding flow events are still not fully understood. Experimental and numerical simulation studies of a centrifugal pump with vaned diffuser were conducted in a wide operating range, and the following notable results were obtained. The energy conversion of pump mode shows three typical stages as the pump head increases, stable work→stumbled work→shaky work, corresponding to the inner flow pattern development of stall-free→stall inception→stall deepening. In this evolutionary process, the attenuation of rotor blade loading gradually spreads from the inlet shroud side to the entire blade. This strengthens the natural adverse potential rothalpy gradient and induces the energetic vortical structures including leading backflow vortices, dynamic stall cells and trailing helical vortices. A strong coupling between large-scale vortical motions and energy conversion is observed and this yields a Logistic growth of the shaft power and pump head fluctuations. The critical condition for the energy conversion instability is the diagnostic function SI = 1, and this is recommended for determining the stability limit of the pump mode. 

Investigation on energy conversion instability of pump mode in hydro-pneumatic energy storage system

As a low-cost scheme for small-scale hydropower generation, pump as turbines (PATs) are used at different hydrosites around the world. Nevertheless, a big number of recently conducted studies on PAT performance have mainly focused on the centrifugal type, despite the fact that the axial-flow type has a comparatively large flow capacity, thus disposing of higher power density. Therefore, this article seeks to investigate the flow dynamics of an axial-flow PAT and associated energy loss characteristics, under both pump and turbine operating modes. It adopts the numerical simulation method and uses entropy production theory to propose an energy loss intensity model in the cylindrical coordinate system, which quantitatively gives the spatial variation pattern for energy losses in pump and turbine operating modes. In addition, the correlation between energy loss and flow instability is deeply analyzed, where the energy characteristics in pump and turbine modes are quantitatively evaluated. It is shown that the energy loss within the impeller and the guide vane flow fields, for both operating modes, is mainly because of the turbulent entropy production. The proportion of direct entropy production and wall entropy production is found to be relatively small. The velocity gradient, flow vorticity, turbulence intensity, and energy losses within the flow passages of the axial-flow PAT have been closely related. However, owing to the difference in PAT operating modes, there is a significant difference in the location of energy losses. The unstable flow phenomena, such as the impact at the blade inlet, flow deviation at the blade outlet, flow separation, back-flow, and vortex, are the main reasons for entropy production. This study serves as a reference for the design, optimization, and application of axial-flow PATs. 

Energy performance evaluation of an axial-flow pump as turbine under conventional and reverse operating modes based on an energy loss intensity model

Pumped storage plant(PSP) is a high efficient emission-free technology to balance the unstable electricity generation from renewable energy. In order to meet the variable requirements from power grid, the pumped storage units need to change working conditions frequently and quickly. Pump turbines have to run in transient processes, which stability affects safe operation of PSP directly. The load rejection of pump turbine is studied in this work, wherein the coordinated regulation of valve and guide vane is applied in this transition. This work aims at increasing the internal fluid stability of pump turbine, by reducing the change rate of pressure and improving flow regime. The combination of theoretical analysis and numerical simulation is the main research method, wherein wall sliding mesh technique is used to achieve continuous movements of valve core and guide vanes. Detached eddy simulation is adopted to solve the transient flow field, the fluid is characterized by a series of parameters like turbulent kinetic energy, pressure fluctuation and vortex evolution, etc. The results prove that a great contribution made by this co-adjusting method, it is beneficial to operation stability of system, especially for the final phase of load rejection. 

Improving internal fluid stability of pump turbine in load rejection process by co-adjusting inlet valve and guide vane

Transition of amplitude–frequency characteristic in rotor–stator interaction of a pump-turbine with splitter blades

Reduction of flow energy dissipation (FED) in pump-turbine is important in improving the energy conversion efficiency of pumped storage power station. By eliminating obvious undesirable flow regimes, the efficiency of modern pump-turbines is higher than 90% in both pump and turbine modes. However, the further efficiency improvement is difficult because it is hard to visualizing, locating and quantifying FED. Based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and thermodynamics evaluation, the irreversible FED features in a reversible pump-turbine is comparatively analyzed in pump mode and turbine mode. By analyzing different off-wall distance zones, the near-wall ( 10 mm) regions are found with high FED. By comparing different components, runner is found as the main FED source (proportion >50%). The stators downstream to runner (vanes in pump mode and draft tube in turbine mode) has also high FED due to local vortical flow. FED in pump-turbine is found with different sub-types. The viscosity-dominated type is found with local increasing of turbulence kinetic energy and temperature. The striking-dominated type is found with local sudden velocity reduction. Targeted elimination of vortical flow, reduction of surface-roughness and improvement of geometry-flow adaptability will be effective in the future high-efficiency design of reversible pump-turbines.

Ran Tao

Papers

Comparative numerical studies for the flow energy dissipation features in a pump-turbine in pump mode and turbine mode