Design of the updraft free-exit-flow hydropower turbine system

The design of updraft free-exit-flow hydropower system was introduced. The model of this system was preliminary analyzed with CFD-FLUENT software, which gives power production efficiency of this system, about 85%. Based on the impact of the traditional turbine system to environment, there are some improvements in the design of the updraft free-exit-flow hydropower system. The major improvements are in areas of: lessening requirement of the structure support, reducing required maintenance, simplifying the structure of the whole system, lightening environmental and ecological disturbances, and providing a kind of system that can partially recover kinetic energy, which saved cost on the draft tube. This new kind of system is especially suitable for low to medium effective head hydropower generation applications, it also can be used to retrofit exiting dams or hydropower stations and so on.