Smart Drive Oil Barrel Undershot Waterwheel

[bmannz]

As a kid I used to make waterwheels in our tiny creek at the farm out of timber scraps, lego gears and lego motors to drive the massive load of one dim red LED in my bedroom 150m away.  I learned a lot more than I realized then about paddle efficiency, balance, torque, bearing wear and watertightness.  30 years on the interest is as strong as ever and having recently brought a piece of land with a large drain running thru it I thought it was time to try it again but this time on a slightly bigger scale.



The drain only runs at around 10-50 lps in the summer but can get to 1000lps in winter. The culvert in the photo is about as deep as Alex is tall and Alex is about 1700mm depending on which gumboots she has on.

[bmannz]

I thought I had about 1200mm of fall so after much research on this forum and a few others I decided on a breastshot with poncelet paddles fed from a weir or dam built out of either compacted clay or posts and board - something like the picture below which I sent of to my engineering friend Tracey for her comments.



After a fun afternoon in the drain with Emma, some garden hose & a home made staff and level I discovered my 1200mm was actually 300mm





So it was back to the drawing board and the Borsten Engineerings website for some recalculation. 

After a few goes with the flow and velocity data I had gathered over several months observation and my newfound 300mm fall information it was clear that the total amount of available energy was somewhere between zero and bugger all, at this point I should probably mention "The Wager"

THE WAGER:
Not long after buying the land I was kicking around the idea of a waterwheel to augment the solar and wind systems we have in place.  One sunny afternoon standing on the bridge with a beer in hand I raised this with a friends dad, who for the purposes of this post we will call Rob.  Rob is someone very handy on the mechanical side and who's opinion on such things I value.  At the end of this discussion he bet me $100 I could not get an average of 50 watts over the course of a year & so the bet was on.

So here I am with both Borsten and Eco Innovations websites among others telling me its not happening & don't waste your time but I know from my childhood there is power there to be had so I completely ignore the advice and power on regardless because I will be dammed if I will lose this bet.

[bmannz]

Borsten told me my only hope was 36 paddles, thinking back to some videos I had seen of crossflow turbines and remembering my childhood wheels stalling when the paddle count got low I decided on as high a paddle count as I could manage. 

With my fall cut to shreds and my flow already iffy at best I was desperately in need of every % efficiency I could get, the Poncelet curved paddle would be a must have.  I considered a design of halved plastic barrels mounted on a complete plastic barrel but the diameter felt wrong.  200L steel drums would be too wide but the 60L drums the mechanics use would be perfect!

Spending a few minutes on Autocad I came up with this design:



Taking a day off work to trawl the mechanics of Auckland I tuned up a shed full of used Castrol 60L barrels that was mine for the taking, trailer load of used oil barrels - check.

[bmannz]

Next it was time to figure out how to get the 10RPM I was hoping for from the wheel up to the 90 RPM a smart drive needs to start pushing out the juice. 

I am thinking sprockets, big ones.

Now my background is electronics, if its got electrons in it, i'm your man, but when it comes to mechanical stuff the only thing I can tell you about my car is it is black and doesn't like it if you put petrol in the diesel tank.

Luckily I have a friend whos brother races go karts and whos dad Randall builds them along with owning a performance car workshop - Edgell Automotive - AKA sprocket city.

After a chat with Randall and a visit to Matt at Auckland Bearings I came away with a bunch of pillow block bearings and some sprocket chain.  Now I know what you are thinking, pillowblocks will sieze as the RPM is too low to keep the bearing lubed and you might be right about this but I have a bunch of mates coming up this weekend and not much time to get the material together, so they'll have to do for now.

Sitting the bits on the floor the transmission looks like this:



One last minute adjustment was the 50mm pipe I had arranged for the axle was slid inside a bigger pipe to enable me to get the wheel on and off the axle to make installation easier - shims would be required to keep the wheel true but my mate Mark pointed out that coke cans are really  good for this.

[bmannz]

Browsing waterwheel images for hours at a time waaaay too late into the night I found waterwheels with a high paddle count commonly have a steel disc around outside to support the paddles and axle. 

My design had two hoops instead made from 32mm galv tube to support the paddles.  The thinking behind the hoops was twofold:

One - This would enable me to mount the barrels at whatever angle Mr Poncelet deemed appropriate
Two - I didn't have any steel discs, but I did have a supply of galv tube in the form of a dissassembled commercial glasshouse from our friends across the road - thanks Jackie and Maike!

I spent a happy hour or two in the dark on Thursday night in 3 degree weather grinding off the rollers from the galv tube:



Friday morning I went to see another friend in Whangarei with access to some serious heavy engineering equipment, he found me a pipe bender small enough to handle my 32mm tube.  A box of Heineken later and we have four hoops.



Saturday morning with all the gear on site and a bunch of friends arrived to lend a hand it was time to put it all together  - first step, weld the spokes to the axle and hoop - one issue - I don't know how to weld, hmm, this could be a problem.

My soldering is pretty good and I brazed some copper pipe one time so I watched a couple of youtube videos with the usual conflicting information about the best way to stick weld galv tube, chose some amperage setting in about the middle and away we went.



After getting the first four spokes welded on I dropped the assembly it on its side to weld the back bits and one of the spokes cracked off the hub - It turns out a couple of passes with the stick does the trick - lesson learnt & further quality control testing  (hitting with hammer) proved the welds were pretty good.

A production line formed to cut the barrels, notch the ends & screw them onto the hoops



Big thanks to Ivan, Chris, Phil, Erin & everyone for lending a hand!

[bmannz]

Sunday morning and its time to install the other two hoops, one problem - how do I get them spaced correctly off the hub while forcing them down into the slots on the rims of the barrels?

Two hot chocolates later and the solution presents itself in the form of 4 ratchet tiedowns, run off the axle out to the outer hoop, running around with a tape measure a crank here and a crank there and its looking pretty good



Rinse and repeat for the inner hub and its starting to look like a waterwheel,  Phil grinds off the excess axle and we are ready to drop this thing in the creek.



Using the 5 tonne Cat to wrangle the wheel into place over the creek we sling the wheel on a bridle made from some more 50mm galv scaf pipe,

The wheel is looking VERY heavy
The flow is looking very low
The online calculators tell me its not going to work
A lot of people are standing around to see the result of two days of furious activity
Its time to find out if this has been a complete waste of time and I have created an expensive sculpture.....

It turns!

It doesn't turn a lot, but water backs up and the thing rotates despite sitting out of level on a rough bit of pipe with no bearings and no flume.

This result is enough to tell me it might work in the easy location next to the culvert rather than the harder location down the paddock a wee way.

Next job to assemble the flume, we knock it together out of 6 pieces of 200x50 and drop it in the creek



With a bit of temporary ply jammed in at the inlet to divert the creek onto the flume we get the massive flow of 15mm depth over the 700mm width, not a lot, but it was this flow that made it turn and I know we will get a lot more after rain so things are looking up.



Back onto the Cat excavator and we drop the wheel on its transport axle down onto the flume and after a bit of wiggling and jiggling the wheel is in place and even with only 15mm of depth, the wheel starts to turn!

[bmannz]

The next step is to figure out how to mount the thing. 

Obvious move is a couple of 300mm posts driven down both sides and sit the pillow blocks on them, however two issues have presented themselves. 

It was obvious from the test fit that a lot of adjustment in the many degrees of freedom would be a big benefit and secondly the axle height is below the peak flow height

After a lengthy design and planning meeting  (sitting by the fire with beer) we come up with a float arrangement to lift the wheel up in high flows, given the weight of this thing - approx 100kgs, I reckon I will need about 6 metres of truss to allow the floats (empty plastic barrels) enough leverage to lift the weight clear. Something like this:  (Float is under water to the left of the wheel, bridge is to the right)



After seeing how tight the alignment in the flume will be, the play over 6m will be too large so back into the design meeting for a rework.  I have some actuator skills and so perhaps we can make a pivot and ballast arrangement with a float sensor to lift the wheel clear of the high flows something like this:



Now float sensors and linear actuators are my bag baby so I can definitely make this work but my KISS alarm is going off, and so we come to the point of this dreadfully long post:

What would Jesus do here?

Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think my next move should be - over to you

[george65]

Thanks for posting!
I would love to play with MH myself. Not likley to happen but there is a lot of satisfaction in reading what you are doing. I'm with you, all these calculators are all well and good but to me, if there is water moving, there is energy. Sure it may not be a lot but if there was no challenge there would be no satisfaction.

Whatever the next move is, please be sure to post it up too. This was a real good read.

[Bruce S]

Don't forget the beers! 

[tanner0441]

Hi.

It has to be do able.  50 W/year is less than 10 W/month. May not do a lot in the summer and lul your friend into holding his wallet open but the winter the tables could turn.

I would also have looked at Archimedes screw in a pipe. more than one turn, I would look at three, could be classed  as positive displacement and every drop of water could be ducted down the pipe and encourage the shaft to turn.

I saw one used to lift water and when the motor was turned of and the chain to the gear box removed the thing immediately started to turn the other way, and it was only about 20 degree slope.

I hope your successful, innovators  deserve reward...


Brian
 

[bmannz]

Thanks for the replies, yes the target output wattage is tiny, I really only need this to negate some parasitic loads like my vantage control system, cameras, wifi and gate controller to protect my batteries as we are 100% off grid here.

The excellent resources available online from Mike Lawley at Eco Innovations (powerspout) are brilliant for predicting what you will get and I am fully in the white "dont waste your time" area below



I was lucky enough to study under Mike at one of his two day alternative energy courses in Taranaki here in NZ. Can't speak highly enough of Mike and his work with smart drives & just a lovely guy

I have to say I came very close to purchasing one of his LH Turbines and may we'll still do so if the wheel winds up washed out to sea!

I fully expect there will be many times the wheel just doesn't turn at all during summer but at these times the solar will more than pick up the slack.

I hadn't thought about a screw, but that's an interesting idea, I have seen a submersible impeller that's definitely on the cards if / when the wheel becomes more hassle than it's worth.

Hopefully someone has a bright idea about the mounting, at the moment I see my options as

Poles under each side of the wheel (issue is axle will likely be underwater in extreme flows risking losing the wheel)

Floats to lift the wheel to safety (breaks the KISS rule and will be hard to align it exactly back with the flume in normal flows)

Pivot to lift the wheel clear (same KISS rule problem)

Streamside mount with articulated truss (ugly and same KISS problem)

Stick it on floats like the hydrocat (my wheel is super heavy tho & flume re-alignment will be tough)


Thanks for the feedback and tips, if anyone's got any bright ideas I'm all ears

[frackers]

Your first diagram in "Reply #6" strikes me as being the most stable - the trailing arm approach is self aligning in one plane, maybe a parallel motion arrangement to stop it twisting.

Wish I had a stream like you have - down here on the South Island we have more wind than we can use and no water!!

[frackers]

Spoke too soon - several paddocks are under water!!


Pigs can swim can't they?

[tanner0441]

Hi

I had a pig once I don't know about swim but they can wallow very happily. The only creature that can turn a wet field into mud faster than a pig is DUCKS.

Brian.

[george65]

According to the forecast where I am on the " North Island" , I wouldn't have to worry.
It will be solid ice tomorrow!

[Harold in CR]

 This is so much like what I have planned, only I used motorcycle wheels and 4" PVC halved capped off. I will mount them both on a pair of gold dredge pontoons and gang them together to run 2 vintage piston water pumps that only need 1/4 HP electric motors to push water up a long grade.

 I hand dug a 30,000 gallon hole and am about to ship a vinyl liner and pumps and assorted bits down here, next month.

 My plan is channel all my 20+ gal minute at low flow under the 2 wheels. As we get many periods of heavy rains, the pontoons will rise up and still allow most debris to pass under the wheels while still turning. Steel cables will hold the device in place.

 It's much easier to push water than produce electricity. Also started placing gutters all around my house and shop to channel that down hill into the hole.

 Going to place sheet plastic in a trough shape under the rows of plantation trees, and let that rain water drain into the hold.

 Will have 100+ feet of head to run a 24V induction motor into a controller for the battery charging.
 All water from the generator will dump back into the stream above the wheels for reuse.

 Solar would not be much help here in the jungle.

 We are about to get hit with a 19% electricity rate increase over the .24 cent rate at this time.

 Really looking forward to updates on this system.

 Sorry if this hijacks your thread.

 Harold

[bmannz]

Cheers guys, hope the kiwis didn't get washed away last night, there has been some crazy weather down there - I understand there was a seriously sick kid in Oamaru hospital and they couldn't get a chopper in and the roads were closed so the Mayor of the Waitaki district declared a state of emergency and called in the army to drive him to Dunedin in a unimog convoy thru the night  - I love New Zealand.

Harold that project sounds cool and I hope one day to be able use the word Jungle in describing a system!  Please do start a thread and chuck up some photos - theres a lot of really clever people on this site who will give you great ideas.

If you want to see the precursor project to this one check out this link: http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php/topic,149310.0.html

Still looking for tips on how to stop my wheel washing away - any ideas please let me know - 6 days and counting till I get back to site.

[DanG]

Neat project though I hope your fangs aren't out and punched through the floor to lock you into that first wheel design 

Looking at the upstream side of the culvert, with the steel vertical guards already there, sure looks like the place to tack in a 'lawn art' micro-waterwheel, floats and a vertical track for it to follow water levels plus easy access to winch it clear for safety & maintenance?

I always wanted to work 55-gallon drums using water as ballast into a tilt-down tower, easy to drain and fill for gradual weight changes, also using 35 or 55-gallon drums filled with stone/concrete as pillars - foundation anchor(s)... and if you do make a see-saw teeter-totter lever lift perhaps a parallelogram frame to keep wheel axis level?

http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php/topic,143898.msg969950.html#msg969950  < --- adding 'ground effects' for the wheel to 'key' into would amplify output, ensuring spent water drops away from wheel... ...would be x10 the cost & varying water levels, oops, next...

http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php/topic,148325.msg1035552.html#msg1035552 < --- pure Art, ongoing project....

Good luck, don't mind me, just an interested spectator 

[bmannz]

Hey Dan, thanks for that, yes I definitely consider this my "first wheel"

Thanks for the link, I remember seeing the upstream shield on a German crossflow design while researching so will give that a go - it's easy to try it out

Mounting the wheel upstream of the culvert is a no-go as a blockage would pond the area and washing out the bridge that took Alex and I 6 days to build would be divorce material!

Thanks also for the link to skids project - I saw that during my research phase and was very jealous of both his river and his monster wheel, that things going to be awesome - can't wait to see it up and running

[bmannz]

Had a chat to another engineer friend over the weekend and his calculations say the water height downstream of the culvert will always be below my axle height as the constriction of the culvert and then widening of the stream at the wheel location means the tide will always be lower there.

Need to do some measurements to confirm but at this stage it looks like I'll be dropping the wheel into the drain in two days time.

If anyone has any tips on rust protection for 10 barrels chopped in half and some freshly welded galv pipe I'm all ears - thinking about a case of dark green rustoleum or "spray on galv"  or similar?

[Mary B]

Spray galvanizing helps but will need to be reapplied every year. I have used it for tower bases...

[DanG]

Product I've used?  The stuff I mention here is for the wear areas and to coat the cut edges with, everywhere else use whatever. The galvanized pipe likely will resist paint from bonding to it for any length of time.

http://www.versatileproducts.co.nz/shop/Speciality+Paints/POR+15.html

Their metal-etch zinc phosphate treatment leaves mild iron with a 400-grit sandpaper texture of anti-corrosion zinc that paint can't help but to stick to.

Their moisture-cure POR15 paint is hard and dense armor, they say it's UV sensitive but I have had some exposed here for 10 years now and its just lost its gloss. Takes two/three coats, sharp edges need prep attention, sanding, for even coating as it will draw away from sharp edges as it cures.

The dinky-little kit they offer might be good to treat just the cut edges and water-borne abrasive wear, note that on the 500mls cans use it all once it hits air --- though I once decanted a can to smaller containers, and sealed them back up successfully by using canned air sold for electronics dusting to cover the paint being poured to keep humidity in the air mixing in & kicking the catalyst into curing, the cold aerosol hugged the paint and displaced most/all air intrusion - the curing paint releases CO2 and would swell the cans if it had started the cure.

[bmannz]

Cheers Mary,

I grabbed some spray galv from Bunnings today to cover up where I ground the galv off for the welds I am thinking of this as wheel#1 so if i get a few years out of it then all good - interesting thing about the hoop and tek screw approach is I can pretty easily change the barrels / paddle count / blade attack angle so even if they disintegrate it's easy to swap them out

Dan, thanks for the tip on the POR - I did read of someone on here coating pillow blocks in it, so glad you reminded me - interesting trick with the canned air - very clever.

Going to drop some temporary mounting posts in the drain on Friday with the digger so I can pop the wheel in and get my torque figures together to be able to correctly setup the smartdrive windings - more pics soon

[bmannz]

Another sunny weekend happily spent in the drain trying not to let the water run over the top of my gumboots!

Got the wheel sprayed with gold galv and the cut edges of the barrels sprayed with a metal paint,
The neighbour turned up to say Hi and jumped right into the drain to help Alex level out the flume.



Using the digger we pushed in the four 100x100 posts, it's a little hard to see in this photo but the hydro-jump at the bottom of the flume is square now for the first time so I know the flume is level, hopefully it will stay there in a flood event (not holding breath)



After spending a good few minutes trying to decide how to ensure all the posts are perfectly level where there is nothing not covered in mud or water to measure from I pushed a Waratah into the drain bed and clamped on my dewalt laser level - a quick session with my vivid marker and its chainsaw time...



Out with the nail gun and the 200x100's are tacked onto the posts (will come back later with some 150mm bugle bolts to make a proper connection



Sitting the wheel into the flume with the digger, I slid on the 50mm pillow lock bearings and worked some wedges into place under them to raise the wheel off the deck, with a bit of wiggling I found the right spot and away she went!

I am getting about 6 rpm, rather than the 9 I was hoping for but some tweaking of the barrels and improving the weir at the head of the flume might help this.

One thing became obvious today, Tracey's "eyeometer" that she'd used for the barrel spacing is about 50mm out in places, the cadence of the wheel changes, so I will adjust this as well next weekend and hopefully get closer to my target 9rpm

[bmannz]

My engineering friend Tracey has a couple of dam building colleagues with access to useful catchment data and modelling software and they seem to be fairly interested in how I am getting along.

Last week  Tracey emailled to let me know my 1 cumec (cubic meters per second) flow that I observed and am basing all my calcs off may be a little on the low side - their numbers for a  50 year event come out at 27 cumecs !  Theres a large pond (approx 6 hectares) that slows things down a lot so hopefully I never see that flow or thats the end of the bridge for sure.

We are nearing the end of the rainy season here, the days are getting longer and I left the turbine sitting in the creek on the pillow blocks with just a couple of short tek screws inside the mounting holes so I can lift the whole thing out with the digger to work on it.

It had been raining a bit in Auckland, but driving up on Thursday night, it one of the waterfalls on the road into Whangarei was pumping so I am thinking I will have a bit of flow to test with, the more we drive the more we are seeing swollen creeks and flooded paddocks, looks like there might have been quite a bit of rain up here, now I am starting to wonder if the wheel will still be there!

Arriving in the dark the wheel is making a slow sloshing sound and using my phone torch I can see the tide is halfway way up to the axles and  the wheel is labouring in the high flow



Rather than the usual 6rpm its doing about 2rpm, sloshing thru the water but at least its still there - I am REALLY going to need to do something with either a swing or float mount or a diversion & possibly pretty soon!

[bmannz]

Saturday dawned clear so into the drain I went to get the smartdrive mounted, months of planning and finally we might get to see some actual power out of this thing today.

I blew on a support frame with the nail gun before bolting it with 150mm bugle bolts - I love those things, I made the frame as tall as the chain would allow to keep the gear out of high flows.

Next I went to cut out the bearing block from the bottom of the washing machine barrel with a sabre saw - and ran straight into a brick wall, the bearings were gone - SH11111T! 

A quick drive into town and standing at the trade counter at Saeco Bearings we measure 25mm ID 47mm OD and 8mm wide, The guy looks them up and "oh no, these are a really odd type" and "oh no, you wont find these in stock anywhere" and "oh, they are going to be really expensive" SH1111T my dreams of getting this wheel running today are evaporating before my eyes...

I went on the net while standing at the counter and found out that they are supposed to be 6005 2RS C3's which are 12mm wide and his face lit up, "oh 60052RSc3's?  oh, they are common" and yes he has plenty in stock and yes they are only about $15.00 each. woohoo!

I tore back out to the farm pausing only for a couple of boxes of Cider at the wholesalers.  Clint and Sarah are up for the weekend and Clint is one of these "jog across the width of the country before breakfast types" and he has recently busted his shoulder in a mountain bike accident which is terrible news for both him and his surfcasting technique but great news for me because being a mountain biker he knows a lot about bearings.

"Thats never going to fit in there"
"Yes it is"
"No way, its too big"
"Just hit it harder"

You get the picture....  A couple of minutes later and with hands covered in Mobil Marfak grease and an assortment of pipe fittings, mallets and timber blocks strewn about and we were done.

Back down to the drain and we started assembling the giblets, running into the second problem of the day, the spider carrying the sprocket was about 1mm too large to clamp down onto the 2" water pipe - A quick coke and the problem was solved



See coke as a shim, I drilled a 5mm hole and put a screw thru the whole lot, unfortunately the screw snapped off so my plans of changing gear ratios summer to winter have gone on the back burner for a bit.

Next we mounted the bearing block, clamping it under a few bits of timber temporarily



I wired a 100w 230V lamp across two of the phases as you can see in the picture

So the whole assembly is teetering at the edge of the creek, we release the brake on the wheel  (spade jammed into the buckets) and away she sloshes at 6 rpm and the lamp puts out the dimmest of glows...



Pretty sure the big end is 54 teeth and the small end is 9 teeth so theres a factor of 6:1, on my rpm of 6 and the F&P is running at 36rpm, a loooong way off my target of 90rpm.

Pushing the wheel even a little with my hand and the lamp glows very brightly so I am tossing up whether to do an intermediate gear around 4:1 or some sorcery with the coil settings & cap doublers etc.

Right now my torque is excellent as the flows are up - I cant easily stop the wheel with my hands any more so an Intermediate might be the go, but in low flows it will stall for sure.

I had entertained adding another smartdrive and engaging it electrically only when the the flows are good

So many options!!

I wrapped the electrical bits in the remains of the bowl and sat beside the drain with a well earned beer with my friends contemplating the wonders of technology.




If you have any opinions on mechanical advantage vs electrical and what your next move would be to pump the output please do let me know!

I also have to decide:
1 Whether to regulate at the wheel or in the shack (60m away)
2 If I can use my spare outback FM80 as a charge controller.
3 If I should bother trying to get this up over 48v or just leave it down around 12v to run my parasitics (system is 48v, and use buck converters around the farm to make 12V wheres its needed so there are no 12V batteries to easily drop this current into.

Any advice gladly received

[MattM]

You really won't be happy until you get to 48v

[bmannz]

Haha, yeah I think your right Matt!

Update to the above, the gears are 94:9, so near enough to 10:1

If my wheel is at 6rpm, the rotor should be at around 60rpm
Why do I read 18hz Phase to star point?

My phase to phase voltage is 30v ac if that's a clue?

[Mary B]

if you have 3 phase don't the phases add? so you would have 54 rpm?

[bmannz]

Hi Mary, in NZ we are 3phase 50 Hz and the frequency is the same on all three phases (the Turbines at Benmore dam have one shaft, produce 3 phases and are spinning 50x per second. So AFAIK no they don't add BUT this is my first time with a polyphase system over three phases so wouldn't put money on it!
 
I am guessing that if I have a 46 coil system and one magnet that's 46phases but given there are lots of magnets I really don't know how these work just yet.

Looking into getting a sprocket custom made with 200+ teeth to get me into the 90RPM zone, hopefully that will help crank out some more watts....

[Mary B]

Not the grid phase, your generator head... is it wired 3 phase or single phase?

[frackers]

Talk to the F&P gurus on http://www.thebackshed.com/ to find out the best way to use the generator.

[bmannz]

Hi Mary, it's a 3phase factory setup right out of the box - haven't modified anything yet, I was giving the example of how grids work to explain how I'm pretty sure the phase frequencies don't add, they are the rotor speed, but like I say, there are a lot more coils and magnets in these than I'm used to in my day job so not 100% sure.

Frackers, thanks for the tip, will pop over and ask the question there