Turgo Watermotor Sept. 12,2000
Dear George,
Yes, we are using turgo wheels we buy from Joseph Hartvigsen. And we
love them. We also would like to know more about them. We run them with
a 18 m net fall and about 410 liters per minute through four 11.1 nozzles at our demo
site.
Great power! Great torque! Starts up a compressor instantly even
with 100 p.s.i. back pressure. What the ultimate strength is, at what
pressure, rpms, and jet size, would all be great to know. And we feel
that it would be worth finding out. We are about to ask the University Hydraulic
Institute here to run some tests. They can pump pressure to 75m.
Something we really need is a dynamometer. This would allow us to do all
these little tuning jobs with highly accurate feedback. Things like jet
sizes, mixes of jet sizes, turbine ''spoon'' rake angle, jet angle (on both
planes) and so on. This is an important part of serious design work.
The dynamometer would need to measure from .5--5 hp at 500 to 5000 rpm,
more or less. I have drawings of old prony brakes and actually built one
years ago, ---much larger. I don't know how we can be doing hydropower
without such a basic tool.
We have also built a larger turgo Watermotor with a 6'' h.d. turgo
wheel with spoons cast from recycled car piston aluminum , using Joseph's
larger turgo ''spoons''' as models, but have not run it yet.
It can use jets up to 1 inch, or four times the volume of water as the 3.5 inch plastic blue spoon turgo runner model we have been running for the last several months.
By the way, we now have a short video filmed at our eastern Andean demo site which shows the Watermotor driving a table saw, 4'' joiner, drill, metal cut-off disk,
alternator, and air compressor------all in seven minutes.
Attached here is our Home Power magazine article 'Waterpower in the Andes'(June/July 1999)
as well as photos of the Turgo Watermotor at our demo site and the patent
drawings for our turgo control device.
Ron
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