Experimental study for the single-stage and double-stage two-bladed Savonius micro-sized turbine for rain water harvesting (RWH) system

This paper examines the performance of the single-stage and double-stage two-bladed micro-sized turbine for the Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) System. RWH system is a method of collecting rain water and storing this free rain water into a tank before reused it for a particular purpose. In this paper, the performance study was focused on the electrical generation capability when Savonius turbine is used. The Savonius turbines were designed and built using an aluminium sheet with an aspect ratio (AR) of 1.8, with height (H) of 8 cm and diameter (D) of 4.5 cm. In this study, performance is compared between the single-stage and the double-stage designs in terms of electrical power generation when the incoming water flows from the water tank passing the micro-Savonius blades in the pipeline. From the finding, it was found that the designed and the built systems have good performance in terms of producing a constant voltage and current. The single-stage produced better performance than double-stage rotor, where power can be generated almost double. Rotor can rotate up to 1280 rpm when single-stage two-bladed Savonius rotor is used, compared to the double-stage rotor. The single-stage two-bladed Savonius micro-sized turbine also capable to light the 0.3 watt LED lamps. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.