Hydropower isn't very good for the environment. It has serious consequences, like killing aquatic life and altering the chemistry of the water that passes through the power plant.

🧪The method we are using🧪

Objective:

• Design an Eco-Friendly Hydropower Dam

Goals to Research in the Project:

1. What are the main issues with Hydropower?
2. How much do dams cost on average?
3. Are engineers attempting to resolve these problems?
4. What are the types of dams?
5. What are the types of turbines?
6. Which type of turbine is more suitable?
7. How do dams work?
8. What turbines are the best to maintain eco-friendliness?
9. What dams are the best to maintain eco-friendliness?
10. What are the environmental impacts of each dam?
11. Are the most common dams environmentally friendly?
12. What are the most suitable dams for each project?
13. What is Polarity?

 

 

 

The first order of business is to address the problems associated with hydropower. Although dams are often seen as beneficial in combating climate change, they can also emit harmful gases. Dams can emit carbon dioxide (C02) and Methane (CH4). What these 2 compounds share in common is that they are greenhouse gases, which are the gases that are responsible for climate change.

 

Another concern is the impact of dams on water chemistry, specifically due to something known as "polarity." In this context, polarity refers to the electrical charge that develops when hydrogen and water interact with each other. The high velocity of the water creates the charge as it rushes through the turbine and interacts with hydrogen atoms. 

 

Additionally, hydropower can negatively affect aquatic and wildlife ecosystems, particularly fish. The placement of the dam can disrupt migration routes, and the design of the dam can pose dangers to fish life. As water is channelled through turbine tunnels, fish can be swept along, often resulting in their death due to the fast-rotating turbines. Regardless of whether a dam is new to an area, it can have a profound effect on the entire ecosystem. Dams have walls. They can be extremely long to pretty short. Dam walls essentially separate the animal life from the other side, which is where they want to go.

 

Finally, we'll be discussing how dams can produce seismic activity. Firstly, and the easiest way seismic activity occurs in dam zones, is that they are built in areas where earthquakes occur often. There are more, as the 2nd reason is the reservoirs themselves. These types of seismicity are what is known as Reservoir-Induced seismic activity, more formally known as RIS. This can happen due to the pressure build-up affecting the dam walls. This can happen from the reservoir taking in too much water, causing the water pressure to build up against the dam walls. Unfortunately, these disasters are relatively common. But, these only occur at relatively tall dams. And we'll be working with small dams.

 

Next up, we will be talking about how hydropower functions.

Essentially, hydropower is a system that's connected to a body of water and produces potential energy. There are 2 generation methods of hydroelectricity generation. Run of Rivers and Dams. The difference is that the dams are connected and constructed in an area while run-of-river is an addition of the river, and the water doesn't go to a different place but, instead, back to where it was by connected back to the river. So, for instance, a dam on a river is connected to a hydropower system, and on the other side is what spews out of the dam after it produces that potential energy. Inside the system, there is a chute that routes the water to the turbine. Essentially what's happening is that gravity will pull the water down fast and spin the turbine. The turbine will produce kinetic energy, which is then turned into electricity from a generator and transported to your home and other locations. There is other stuff, like how they use their height to their advantage, which is self-explanatory, but essentially gravity increases the fall from the drop, which produces more energy as the faster the turbine spins, the more kinetic energy is produced.

Generally, the question we should be asking is, what's better for our project?

Typically, Dams produce a ton more energy in hydropower, but they're too expensive to do. So, in our case, we'll be using run of river, thanks to its easier design model and easier way for fish to migrate. Bonus: They have less of a carbon footprint, and they have reduced emissions thanks to relying on the natural current of the river.

 

Alright, so we've figured out the problems, total cost, and the type of hydropower we'll be using, but the next item on our checklist is the turbines. What we'll need to understand are the types of turbines and the best turbine for the biosphere.

The first type that we'll be starting with is reaction turbines. Reaction turbines are generally turbines that move the water instead of relying on a natural flow. These types of turbines are found in low-head and high-current hydropower locations. The turbines that you'll find in this category are the Propeller turbine, Bulb turbine, Staflo turbine, Kaplan Turbine, Francis Turbine, and finally, the Kinetic turbine. Impulse turbines use the speed of the water to rotate the blades. 2 turbines only fit in this category. Those being the Pelton and Cross-flow Turbine. You may find either of the 2 at high-head but low-flow locations.

Now, which type of turbine is best suited for our project? You may be asking.

Well, that depends on the environment itself. First off, each turbine type is placed in areas that are the most bio-friendly. The true question is, what's the environment we're using for this run-of-the-river hydropower type? Well, since rivers are generally associated with being fast-paced, that means that we'll be using a Reaction turbine instead of an impulse turbine since reaction turbines are more suited for high currents while Impulse turbines are best suited for low currents.

Now, which reaction turbine will we be using? Well, I've selected 2 of the best turbines and decided to compare them to answer that. These 2 reaction turbines are the Kaplan turbine and the Francis Runner turbine. The Kaplan turbine can come with fish-friendly designs and oil-free designs. I specifically chose this turbine as it is ideal for rivers or any other location with high currents. The blades can be adjusted to your desires and have fewer friction losses. The problem with Kaplan turbines is that it's expensive to manufacture and install. It also has a complex design, so it's harder to maintain. It can take tons of damage in the long run. On the other hand, Francis Runner turbines also have fish-friendly designs and don't require much space. Although the Kaplan turbine is expensive and can receive heavy amounts of damage, its positive aspects overcome the negative aspects. It's also mainly meant for rivers, which is the model we'll be using since run-of-the-river uses that.

 

Another critical topic is the total cost of the plant itself. Generally, the total cost of dam construction factors in construction, maintenance, environmental regulations, and energy market costs. The general cost to build a micro-hydropower plant is around $4000 to $6000, which is not as hefty as a lot of hydropower stations that cost millions if they produce grid power.  Maintenance is pretty hefty as they cost between $10,000 and $100,000. However, we need to account for additional customizations that we'll be adding. The fees for the environmental regulation come from 4 factors, environmental approval (permit to make sure the station complies with local, provincial and federal environmental standards), Water licensing (if the project diverts water this is necessary), Land access (this is necessary if its on crown-owned land and the land requires you to pay a permit), and impact assessment (how much it'll cost based off of the environmental impact). Just from these 4 factors, we can't find the exact amount.

The next cost we'll be discussing is the customizations. The planned improvements include a fish-friendly and oil-free turbine design. This is due to the plant being a pipe in the rriver that rotates the turbine.

The Fish-friendly and oil-free Kaplan turbine cost depends on the site, project and amount of electricity being produced. So they could be ranging from $21,563.39 to $79,065.76 in Canadian Currency.

 

Given that the nature of my presentation is a research proposal, I don't have an experiment to present data. Any relevant data regarding my presentation has been included in the research. 

Hydropower is generally one of our main sources of power, as it's the world's largest renewable way of producing electricity. While it has an edge over fossil fuel as an energy source due to its renewability and the fact that source depletion is not an issue. However, my research shows that as the world evolves, energy sources should also accommodate a growing need for environmental protection and sustainability. 

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2. Energy4me
3. The Environmental Literacy Council
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5. U.S Department of Energy
6. CivilleBlog
7.  GRABCAD 
8.  Structuracivilblog
9.  Powering Solution
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40. EnergyRates.ca
41. Introduction to Hydropower in Canada

 

 

We acknowledge the engineers trying their best to resolve these issues and hydropower in general. Without Hydropower, we wouldn't have a better renewable energy source. Hydropower inspired us to make this entire project to improve dams. We also acknowledge the creator who made the Kaplan Turbine model and imported it into GrabCad; this project would be futile without it.