International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2013)

Micro-Generation of Electricity From Tap Water

Lalitha.S
B.Tech student, EEE Department, Pondicherry Engineering College, Puducherry-605014.
Abstract- Why rely on a waterfall for power generation? It causes a problem of difference in pressure, because
Instead use the forceful tap water or the shower in our if the pressure is at least 2bars in the upper houses, it
washrooms. Tap Water is a suggestion for the growing means that in the lower ones, the pressure is very much
power demand. If every house could use a cheap mini higher. If the altitude difference is 10 meters, the pressure
generator for every tap, can’t that light up the bathrooms difference is 1 bar usually.
when the tap is opened? The idea could be extended to the
Assuming a 100 meters altitude difference, the
overhead tanks too. The energy is trapped from the tap
water, where the work of the turbine could be done by a pressure in the lower place would be 12 bars which is
mini fan, which is connected to a mini-sized generator to very high. Hence, the tap, dishwasher, washing machine
generate Electricity. The USP or the thing that makes this and other devices cannot support such a pressure. Hence,
idea unique is that No conditions apply! Every house will a pressure reducing device is installed in order to reduce
have a tap and every household wants to reduce the EB bill. the pressure on the lower altitude part of the water
It could be possible with a moderate investment. If batch network.
processing could be achieved, the manufacturing cost would The turbine will extract the energy contained in the
come down too. However, the challenges that come on the water and causes rotation of the generator which hence
way are many. They include varying force of water,
produces electricity. As the velocity is the same before
intermittency in the usage, the very less power that one
could trap from every water tap. Then why not all the taps, and after the turbine, the loss of energy is taken on the
but the problem of integrating a number of generators to pressure of water. So, turbines reduce the pressure
supply and store energy in a single battery or integrating indirectly. We can hence use a turbine to reduce the
them to the grid voltage and frequency becomes a major pressure in a water network of a place of varying
issue that has to be handled. Thus we need to develop a altitudes.
circuit for CHARGING A SINGLE BATTERY FROM The higher the difference in altitude, the higher the
MULTIPLE ENERGY SOURCES and develop a successful flow is. The turbine will now turn fast due to the higher
design to trap energy from the taps and integrate them. pressure loss. One should also note that the pressure of
This idea will not only be useful for the tap but in most
water must not fall under 2 bars. This can occur at peak
cases of renewable energy tapping as in a cycle dynamo in a
gym or electricity from rain, where the main problem is the demand. This requires some control circuit to maintain
integration of micro energy sources. This paper throws light the water pressure.
on one of the most important practical aspect of micro-
generation of green energy and its integration to the grid II. USING T AP W ATER AS A SOURCE
whose idea can be extended to other green energy sources
The idea is that one can fix up mini fans that would
also.
start rotating as the tap is opened. The higher the force or
pressure of water, the higher is the speed of the fan. The
I. INTRODUCTION
fan shaft is connected to a mini generator set. Voltage is
The urban water cycle consumes energy to provide generated at the generator terminals. This voltage can be
us water for all purposes like drinking water, water for stepped up and can be used to charge the battery.
industries, etc. It also treats our waste water and recycles To avoid the storage trouble, we can design a control
it. But it can also provide energy by several means such circuitry that would switch on the washroom light as and
as: when the tap is opened or at least this power can be used
Using the velocity or force of water in the drinking for water induction heater.
water network to turn a turbine and generate Our taps pose a real challenge. They are just a meter in
electricity size and hold very much lesser water and potential
Using wastewater as a source of heat for heat energy when compared to a dam and the hydro electric
pumps power plant. Hence the difficulty arises in harnessing this
Using the sewage sludge (wastewater treatment small but valuable power from the taps. The turbine
sludge) in an anaerobic digester (using anaerobic should fit into the pipe and the device should be able to
bacteria) to produce biogas. generate more power, at least the power required to light
In some mountainous places, there can be a huge a fluorescent lamp.
altitude difference between the houses on the higher
altitudes and the ones at the lower.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2013)
III. DESIGN C ONSIDERATIONS Even when stored in a battery, the electric storage
efficiency comes to play, where the energy trapped gets
almost exhausted by the various stages of conversion. So,
the investment made on the apparatus does not serve the
purpose.
Investing on such separate micro-generation units for
every tap is impossible and totally uneconomical. Hence
we need to find a way to integrate the negligible amount
of intermittent energy to give a reasonable wattage. If
several such tap could feed a single battery, this will give
a reasonable power with reduced investment. Since a
Fig 1: Fans used to drive the micro-generator turbine single battery is going to be used , the efficiency of the
battery storage is not going to cost us a significant loss.
The device design is of main concern now. It consists
of an external hydro-electric generator and a highly
efficient spherical water turbine that dips into the flowing
water and reclaims the residual pressure. The turbine in
turn drives a rotating shaft which rotates the rotor of the
micro-generator producing electricity.
The key lies in a number of intelligent designs to
extract more energy from flowing water. A number of
thinner blades is desired to mitigate the water bypassing.
The 8-blade turbine would only take away a fraction of
kinetic energy because it strikes an accurate balance
between water volume, pressure and consumption of
hydrokinetic energy, which boosts the efficiency without
reducing the momentum of running water in order to
guarantee a reliable water and power supply. The Turbine
blades are carefully sized to (the thinner, the better) inter
sect the largest possible area of water flow and minimize
water bypassing.
To achieve maximum power output, a hollow central
Fig 2: The output power Vs load resistance
rotating shaft is proposed to utilize the full harnessed
energy for conversion into electric power. As it is the
drinking water pipe, care should be taken so that there is V. CHARGING A S INGLE B ATTERY FROM MLTIPLE
no lubricant used in any of the rotating parts of the ENERGY SOURCES
turbine and generator. This is done in order to avoid any A single battery charging device with multiple sources
sort of contamination. consists of: a battery; an input power controlling circuit
and a charging circuit connected to an external power
IV. E LECTRICAL O UTPUT OBTAINED source for determining the power charging of the battery.
The power charging control circuit is used for detecting
When the above circuit was constructed with the tap, a
the voltages of the battery for determining whether the
normal sized tap water filter fan and a 6W DC generator.
power input controlling and charging circuit is charged to
With normal or at the most maximum water force from a
single tap, the generator terminals gave a power of 0.5 to the battery; the power charging circuit gets its input from
0.75 W at the maximum. When plotting the load curve an Ethernet power supply and it feeds the charging
circuit. The charging circuit is then connected to the
for the maximum power obtainable, it was found that the
battery device; the power charging control device is
device delivers a maximum of 1W at most. However, as
connected to the Ethernet power supply for controlling
the tap water force decreases the output almost drops to
the voltage so that it increases to a uniformly charging
zero.
The output voltage seen was 3.5V at the generator voltage.
terminals. With a normal load like a lamp the device
would generate few milli-amperes which is absolutely
negligible.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2013)
VI. ADVANTAGES O F T HE MULTI-S TORAGE
CHARGER DESIGN
Regeneration power source is utilized. Hence the
power is saved. There is negligible or no release of
carbon.
One power charger’s failure will not affect the
entire battery storage system.
The inter-control devices help in quick switching
among the two charging devices without much time
delay.
The voltage of the external source can direct the
output device connected directly.
At the times of over-voltages if any, the control
circuit does not allow the output and hence the
devices are protected.
The presence of battery polarity protection circuit
disables the connection in case of improper
connection. Hence the rest of the power system
remains unaffected due to the polarity reversal.

VII. APPLICATION O F MULTI-S UPPLY CONCEPT T O

T HE T AP SYSTEM
The above Multi supply batter storage is designed for
two different supplies. When one tap is to produce
750mW, it doesn’t make a big difference on integrating
just 2 taps. Hence the circuit has to be extended to a
Fig 3: Block diagram of Multi-Source Charging
number of taps. The cost invested does not seem to be
It also consists of an inter-control device and a switch very economical.
for the drive. It is an optical transistor with a light emitter However as told previously this idea could be
that acts as an optical coupler. The optical transistor is implemented on the pipes rooting down from the
used for switching purpose and the light emitter acts as overhead tank, so that the power output is reasonably
the driver. This is not the only design possible. However higher for the amount invested. The design complexities
it is better and easily implementable compared to the also arise. Still, hoping that the water network has more
others. scope to tap some green energy, some countries have put
There is also a polarity detection, protection circuit forward their steps to tap the electricity that the water
and an over voltage limiter circuit that is basically network would provide us with. They are mentioned
formed by a diode to protect the system against improper below.
battery polarity.
The driver is installed to the power input controlling VIII. FOCUS ON W ATER E LECTRICITY B Y COUNTRIES
and charging circuit. The switching device for the input The Department of Building Services Engineering
is connected to the power charging control unit for an (BSE) and the Water Supplies Department (WSD) of the
Ethernet power supply. Switching of the switch devices Hong Kong Special Administrative Regional
actuate the charging control unit to charge the battery Government are trying to work on extracting electricity
cell. from the water mains in their country. It has a network of
The external power supply can be drawn from solar water mains running over 7,800 km, and kept monitoring
panels or water generator, wind generators, heat to make sure their water supply network is kept clean and
generators, etc. However to be application specific, we maintained efficiently remain clean and well-maintained.
consider the taps to be integrated as the separate external Those devices require power. On the other hand, it also
power supplies for the device. has the capability to resolve the ever-growing power
requirement.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2013)
They are focusing on plans to put small turbines into The ions that are oppositely charged are attracted and
our pipes to produce electricity from drinking water hence pushed to the far end of the channel, while the
network. The mini-hydro power plants are being put to similar charges are left behind at the other end. This
test in a number of locations including underground pits forms a potential difference across the two ends of the
and outdoor environments. The estimates show that the microscopic channel. By fixing electrodes between these
in-pipe turbines are expected to save 700kWh of two ends and using a conducting wire, we can realize
electrical energy. The carbon emission is estimated to be electricity. Research on this area has scope for future
reduced by 560kg per year. developments.

IX. RECENT T RENDS

Though the water network electricity is gaining
momentum, another area where water could help with the
micro-generation on electricity. A fluid flowing through
a microscopic channel is capable of producing electricity
when its electro-kinetic energy is harnessed.
If it is practicable, then it would be possible to power a
mobile phone by squirting water through a number of
such microscopic channels.

Fig5: Formation of Electrical double layer in a carbon Nano- tube

Fig 4: Recent designs in water turbines to capture maximum water
energy XI. CONVERSION T O AC MAINS VOLTAGE
Having seen the water electricity and its power output
X. PRINCIPLE O F CONVERSION OF H YDRO -K INETIC in the experiment, we can extend this idea to higher level
ENERGY water pipes and networks for more electric power
The basic principle involved in this is the phenomenon generation. If the micro-generation is to be empowered as
of separation of charges at the interface between the a higher level power generation as planned in Hong
liquid surface and the channel surface. A very small part Kong, the grid integration of this energy is a must.
of one charge, either positive or negative gets dissolved While working on the tap water electricity, we tried to
in water. This makes the surface negatively or positively implement this grid integration using the circuit below.
charged respectively. This may lead to a Helm Holtz Since the power rating of the device is very low, building
double layer formation as the correspondingly opposite this circuit was in a way simpler. Here, it is designed for
charges in the liquid form a double layer along with the 30VA power rating to convert a 12 volt DC into a 230V,
surface charges. This electric Double Layer is the cause 50 Hz AC.
for the energy conversion.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2013)

Fig7: PCB layout of the inverter circuit used

Fig6: Design of 12V DC to 230V, 50Hz AC inverter circuit XII. GRID INTEGRATION O F W ATER NETWORK
Although the circuit is designed for a 12V DC, it is E LECTRICITY
ideal to use a 9V DC, as there is almost 3V drop between Grid integration experiments need at least a few kWh
the collector and emitter of the power transistor. The high of energy. Integration of renewable energy to the grid or
saturation voltage poses a definite problem of power even to the micro-grid is a still tedious task. When one
wastage. area of green energy research aims at trapping energy
The presence of the 230V output can be indicated from all ways possible, the other big area of research is to
using a VDR voltage dependant resistor. The S10K250 integrate them to the grid. The difficulties in the grid
clips of the spikes and surges that will appear at the integration process is due to the nature of renewable
power transistor switching points. The output of the energy such as:
circuit is approximately a square wave as it includes the Non-controllable variability
distortion as a result of using the transformer. The circuit Partial unpredictability
is capable of supplying fluorescent lamps, incandescent Frequency regulation
bulbs, motor circuits and other electronic devices. Intermittent nature of energy
Although the PCB could carry only low power and Location dependence
low voltage handling devices, the circuit remains the
same as used for tap water electricity. Although we XIII. FUTURE SCOPE
aimed at 9V ideally, the practical single tap water force
could give a maximum of 4V only. Hence the power Since, renewable energy is the future of the power
from the tap was stored in a car battery of 12V and the generation, the tap water electricity can be further applied
battery voltage was converted to the ac mains voltage and to trap energy from the drinking water networks and
frequency. suitable grid integration techniques have to be developed
as grid integration challenges are device specific.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2013)
This idea hence paves way for future research in this
area. From the Energy estimates, we can see the
emerging importance of renewable energy world-wide.
This also shows the importance of such green energy
resources such as the one presented in this paper. In
addition to it lies the most challenging task of the grid
integration of such renewable energy resources.
REFERENCES
[1] Massachusetts Institute of Technology: The Future of the
Electric Grid, Report, 2011
[2] S. J. Zowski, Water turbines; contributions to their study,
computation and design
[3] Rashid, Power Electronics: Circuits, Devices and
Applications, 3rd edition.
[4] Department of Building Services Engineering and the Water
Supplies Department (WSD) of the Hong Kong, Report,
2012.
[5] The Physics Department, University of Alberta
(www.ualberta.ca/~clubphys )
[6] László Guczi, András, Catalysis for Alternative Energy
Fig8: Estimates of renewable energy up to 2035 (Energy Statistics Generation
2012) [7] Burnice Doyle Bedford, Richard Gibson Hoft, Principles of
inverter circuits
The work focuses on utilizing the water power for the
energy needs and can also be used in the frequency
control area by adopting the analogy of a pumped water
storage plant.

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