Product Abstract

EPRI's 2002 report, Maintaining and Monitoring Dissolved Oxygen at Hydroelectric Projects: Status Report (1005194) provided a comprehensive review of a wide range of techniques and technologies for improving the dissolved oxygen (DO) levels in releases from hydroelectric projects. This report supplements EPRI 1005194, focusing primarily on aerating turbine technologies for new turbine installations and for turbine upgrades.

Objective

This Technology Roundup report documents hydraulic and environmental performance for three turbine aeration technologies from two turbine manufacturers. In some cases, turbine manufacturers, agencies, and utilities were reluctant to share detailed performance information, negatively affecting the scope of this report. Developing relationships which will enable the open, collaborative sharing of hydraulic and environmental performance information remains as a significant challenge for the future. EPRI anticipates that this report will help to encourage industry cooperation.

Approach

This Hydropower Technology Roundup uses a review of the technical literature from 1998 through 2009 and direct contact with personnel from turbine manufacturers, utilities, and agencies to provide information and performance data on the status of aerating turbine technologies. Hydraulic and environmental performance results are analyzed and presented as case studies.

Results

The report describes some of the difficulties in assessing the performance of aerating turbines and provides detailed case studies for three aerating turbine technologies (central aeration, peripheral aeration, and distributed aeration). The report discusses the implications of these case study results for plant operation and optimization and makes recommendations for additional related research.

EPRI Perspective

This EPRI Hydropower Technology Roundup is one of a series of update reports that provide information on topics of high-interest to hydroelectric plant operators and owners. These reports are aimed to cover both operation and maintenance issues, as well as new and emerging issues, technologies, and approaches. The first report in the Hydropower Technology Roundup program series was published in 1999. This is the thirteenth Technology Roundup report.