The Arena Dam is located in northern Trinidad and forms a 35,000 acre-foot reservoir used to augment the dry season water supply. Water is stored during the wet season and released systematically during the dry season. The dam provides approximately 75 million gallons of treated drinking water per day. The earth fill embankment is 1.6 million cubic yards and built on deep clay soils near the El Pilar Fault.
The Arena Dam is located in northern Trinidad and forms a 35,000 acre-foot reservoir used to augment the dry season water supply. Water is stored during the wet season and released systematically during the dry season. The dam provides approximately 75 million gallons of treated drinking water per day. The earth fill embankment is 1.6 million cubic yards and built on deep clay soils near the El Pilar Fault.
The Arena Dam is located in northern Trinidad and forms a 35,000 acre-foot reservoir used to augment the dry season water supply. Water is stored during the wet season and released systematically during the dry season. The dam provides approximately 75 million gallons of treated drinking water per day. The earth fill embankment is 1.6 million cubic yards and built on deep clay soils near the El Pilar Fault.
The Arena Dam is located in northern Trinidad and forms a 35,000 acre-foot reservoir used to augment the dry season water supply. Water is stored during the wet season and released systematically during the dry season. The dam provides approximately 75 million gallons of treated drinking water per day. The earth fill embankment is 1.6 million cubic yards and built on deep clay soils near the El Pilar Fault.
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ARENA DAM
The Arena Dam is located on the Arena River in the north central region of Trinidad (Refer To Figure 1.0), it forms a 35,000 acre feet reservoir which serves as the main raw water storage facility for Trinidad, augmenting the dry season. Water from the Arena is impounded during the wet season for release systematically during the dry season .The Arena River provides about 40% of the water needed to fill the reservoir , the remainder is obtained from the Tumpuna River. A weir is located downstream of the confluence of the Arena and Tumpuna Rivers backs water up the Arena River channel to the dam toe .Consequently During the wet season a pumping station at the base of the dam pumps water back into the reservoir and During the dry season water is released through the outlet works and flows down the Arena and Tumpuna Rivers to the Caroni River an there it is withdrawn for water treatment. This system allow for an approximate 75 million gallons per day of treated drinking water year round about half of the island supply.
The
earth fill embankment is approximately 1.6 million cubic yards and has a crest elevation of about 80 feet above the original streambed (Refer to Figure 2.0 & 3.0). The upstream sloping core is composed of dispersed clay, and the shells are composed of compacted fine sand and silty fine sand. The Arena Dam is built upon deep, stiff, fissured clay soil interbedded with sand .The Dam is located approximately 12 miles from the El Pilar Fault (a major Caribbean fault with seismic activity which can be compared to that of 1 | Page
the San Andres Fault).At the dam Site, a flood plain approximately 800 feet wide lies at an elevation of an approximate 73 feet above the mean sea level. This flood plain is underlain by up to 50 feet of alluvium. Prior to construction, the Arena River flowed in a channel approximately 20 feet deep in the flood plain. The reservoir consist of rolling hills with relief generally ranging from 150 feet to 200 feet.
Figure 1.0 showing the vicintiy map
Figure 2.0 showing Maximum Dam Section
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Figure 3.0 showing the outlet conduit profile
PUMPED STORAGE CONCEPT
The principle governing the pumped storage concept is fairly simple, it
utilized gravitational potential to store energy .In perspective there are two bodies of water, one located at a higher elevation than the other, and a system of tunnels and piping connects them both. When the demand is low (referred to as the off peak time) and electricity is cheap the plant uses energy to pump water from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir (Refer To Figure 5.0). Subsequently, when Demand is high (known as the Peak Time
) and electricity is more expensive water from the elevated reservoir is
released back into the lower reservoir through the same system of pipes , at this point turbines as they would normally in a traditional hydroelectric plant generates electricity (Refer To Figure 4.0) . The system is mainly housed within man made caverns inside mountains to reduce the environmental impacts. This type of plant actually has a net use of energy, the advantage come from the fact that once the facility is operational it can respond quickly to energy demands. Nearly all facilities use the height difference between the two reservoirs or natural bodies of water, however there is a slight difference , a pure pumped storage plant just shifts the water between 3 | Page
the reservoirs while the pump-back approach is a combination of pumped
storage and conventional hydroelectric plants that use a natural steam-flow. When taking into account evaporation losses from the exposed water surface and conversion loses, 70 to 80 percent of the electrical energy used to pump the water form to lower reservoir to the higher reservoir can be regained .This technique is currently one of the most effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy however capital cost and the appropriate geography are to be taken into careful consideration.
Figure 4.0 showing the generation of electricity when demand is high .
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Figure 5.0 shows the storage of energy by pumping water to elevated reservoir
WATER TURBINES A turbine extracts energy from a fluid which possesses high head .In general there are two types, reaction and impulse, the difference lies in the manner of head conversion. In the reaction turbine, the fluid fills the blade passages, and the head change or pressure drop occurs within the impeller. Reaction Designs are of the radial flow, mixed flow and axial flow types and are basically dynamic devices designed to convert the high energy fluid to a form of momentum .An impulse turbine first converts the high head through a nozzle into a high velocity jet, which then strikes the blades at one position as they pass by. The impeller passages are not fluid filled, and the jet flow past the blades is basically at constant pressure.
REACTION TURBINES
Newtons third law is used to describe the transfer of energy for
reaction turbine. Reaction turbines are low head, high flow devices, the flow is opposite that in a pump entering at the larger diameter section and 5 | Page
discharging through the eye after giving up most of its energy to the impeller .The first inward flow turbine was built by James B. Francis an now all radial or mixed flow designs are now called Francis turbines however ,at lower heads a turbine can be designed with only axial flow which is termed as a propeller turbine , the propeller may either be fixed blade or adjustable which is known as the Kaplan turbine .
THE FRANCIS TURBINE
These are adaptable to varying heads and flows and may be run in reverse as a pump such as on a pumped storage set up. They operate in a water head from 10 to 650 meters and are normally used for electrical power production, the speed range of the turbine is from 83 to 1000 rpm. These turbines are most time mounted with the shaft vertical to keep water away from the attached generator and to accommodate installation and maintenance access to it and the turbine. The turbine is noted to be an inward flow device as said before with water entering around the periphery and moving to the center before exhausting .the rotor is contained in a casing that spreads the flow and pressure evenly around the periphery.
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Figure 6.0 shows a typical large Francis turbine in which water is fed radially to the runner from guide vanes which are disposed around the full circumference
THE KAPLAN TYPE TURBINE
The Kaplan turbine is a pure reaction turbine, the main feature is that all the flow energy and pressure is exhausted over the rotor and not in the supply nozzle .Kaplan turbines are more suited for low pressure heads and large flow rates such as on dams and tidal barrage schemes.
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Figure 7.0 Shows details of a large Kaplan turbine through which the water flow is essentially axial.
IMPULSE TURBINES
The impulse turbine utilizes the concept of Newtons Second law and is suitable in applications requiring high head and relatively low power. Impulse turbines changes the direction of flow of a high velocity fluid, the resulting impulse then spins the turbine and leaves the fluid flow with a lower kinetic energy than its initial. Before reaching the turbine the fluids pressure head is changed to velocity head by accelerating the fluid with a nozzle, because of this these turbines do not require a pressure casement around the rotor since the fluid jet is created by the nozzle before reaching the blade on the rotor which normally has an elliptical split-cup shape .the Pelton wheel is an example of an impulse turbine and was named after Lester A. Pelton who produced the first efficient design.
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Figure 8.0 shows a typical design of A Pelton Wheel
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IMPULSE AND REACTION TURBINE
N. O 1.
Impulse Turbine
Reaction Turbine
The fluid flows through
the nozzle and impinges on the moving
The fluid first flows
through the guide mechanism and then through the moving blades The fluid glides over the moving vanes with pressure and kinetic energy He fluid pressure is reduced during its flow through the moving blades The blades are not symmetrical
2.
The fluid impinges on
the buckets with kinetic energy
3.
The fluid may or may
not be admitted over the whole circumference The blades are symmetrical
4.
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REFERENCES
Websites https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/34526/P %200651-%20Design%20and%20Peformance%20of%20Arena%20Dam.pdf? sequence=1 http://www.technologystudent.com/energy1/pstr1.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity 10 | P a g e
http://www.mech.uq.edu.au/courses/mech7350/lecture-notes-inpdf/mech7350-10-hydraulic-turbines.pdf http://www.freestudy.co.uk/fluid%20mechanics/t8a203.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/boysen2/ Books Fluid Mechanics Frank M White 4th edition
