An Experimental Investigation of PAT in Direct and Reverse Mode at Turbine Testing Lab

PAT is typically employed as the electromechanical component, especially in the rural communities of developing countries in order to reduce the initial cost of a power plant. In the context of Nepal, there have been few researches about its feasibility but have given promising outcomes regarding its implementation. As a part of this continuation, this paper deals with the experimentation performed on end suction, KDS-520+ centrifugal pump of 3.5 kW on direct as well as reverse mode to study its performances. The main purpose of this study was to test the characteristic performance of the pump in turbine as well as pump mode to compare the variation in their efficiency in laboratory environment so as to shed light upon the importance of PAT in micro and mini hydropower and to study the prospect of replacing traditional water mills with PAT. The test rig for the operation of pump in turbine mode was developed as a part of the research and characteristic curves have been plotted on different flow rates. The efficiency of the centrifugal pump was found similar to the rated efficiency, 60.85% at the best efficiency point at the head of 17m and discharge of 17lps. In addition, performance of the same pump in turbine mode showed a maximum efficiency of 40.15% at flow of 11.5lps and head 10m which concluded that the centrifugal pump can operate in turbine mode without any modifications.