3/2/2022
A CEE team led by assistant professor Rafael Tinoco will research the use of small-scale hydropower units to turn the energy of flowing water into electricity for their use in military deployments.
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A CEE team led by assistant professor Rafael Tinoco will research the use of small-scale hydropower units to turn the energy of flowing water into electricity for their use in military deployments.
The project, “Evaluation of Micro-Hydro Units for Army Resilience” will be funded through a Research and Development Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center at the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) in Champaign. The goal is to establish testing and evaluation procedures for small hydro turbines. The work will be carried out at Tinoco’s Ecohydraulics and Ecomorphodynamics Laboratory (EEL) and in the Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory.
“This project will contribute greatly to the public purpose of improving the state of the science and engineering for a renewable and resilient energy production technology,” Tinoco said.
The team has three main objectives: characterize operation of single micro-hydro units, under extreme flow conditions (from low-energy shallow flows to deeper fast moving flows); identify energetically optimal configurations for deployment of multiple units; and develop a testing protocol for assessment of micro-hydro units.
“By evaluating the feasibility of micro-hydro deployments, we will provide a decision framework to select optimal sites, turbine type and turbine-array configuration for efficient Army deployments,” Tinoco said. “We will also develop a testing framework for a consistent assessment of new micro-hydro technologies. In addition to optimizing energy output, we’ll address the environmental impact of the micro-hydro deployments, critical to prevent water contamination and noticeable disruptions downstream of the deployment.”