Quote:
Originally Posted by Hersbird
A turbine is just a reverse pump. The impeller runs the motor rather than the motor running the impeller. You can have a tiny amount of power associated with tremendous head, or a huge amount of power and almost no head. Take a 5hp pressure washer making 2700 psi but only 2.3 gpm, compared to the main condensate pump on an aircraft carrier only making 8 psi but could fill an olympic sized swimming pool every 5 mins. I can't remember their HP rating, but they are huge.
In a way they are sad because that is all waste heat. My buddy went to work at a power plant in the great lakes area (non nuclear btw) and all of their waste heat is used to heat the town's sidewalks in the winter.
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The point I was trying to make is,that a river is system open to the atmosphere and any power harvested will be limited by available kinetic energy.We could gang a lot of low-power turbines,side-by-side,but without a lot of hydraulic head available,they'll remain low-power in comparison to a 'tall' dam.