Energy Recovery from Multipurpose Water Resources in the Micro-Hydro Field

The study is focused on the analysis of two resources that are still under-exploited in the field of micro-hydro in order to identify potential resources which could be still exploited: irrigation canals and aqueducts. These are widespread resources which have in common low negative externalities because they are existing man-made structures which are little affected by environmental negative externalities. This thesis follows the experimental approach able to model and test different situations as well as to produce procedures and results final users are interested in, such as efficiency, interaction with the flow for specific configurations and devices characteristics. In this thesis two hydropower energy conversion methods were adopted one in free-surface canals and the other in pressurized pipes. In the irrigation canals we studied the geometry in order to reduce the installation costs while in the aqueduct case the experiments were focused on the turbine management to meet the aqueduct needs. In both studies, a final objective was the optimization of the efficiency. An experimental flume was realized to study the irrigation canals exploitation by adopting a RHPM waterwheel. The study about the hydroelectric exploitation of an aqueduct system was aimed to understand the possibility to manage a Francis multistage turbine for pandering the flow and heads fluctuations. In this case the geometry is fixed and the hydraulic parameters are time dependent. This thesis shows the possibility to exploit both the irrigation canals and water supply network resources, the first one thanks to the potential low cost of the structure, which is adaptable to many geometric and hydraulic situations, the second one thanks to the automatable turbine management.