Abstract :
Indonesia's natural resources that have great potential as power plants are
water energy sources. Considering that Indonesia has a lot of forest and river
wealth, screw turbines have very good prospects to be implemented in Indonesia
because screw turbines can operate at low heads, such as rivers, with high
efficiency. This will be a cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative
energy. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the number of blades
on the electric power, torque, and efficiency produced from single- and double blade turbines. The study was conducted on two screw turbine models withan outer
diameter of 15 cm, number of blades of 10 pieces, pitch distance of 10 cm, and
screw length of 100 cm for a single blade turbine, and an outer diameter of 15 cm,
number of blades of 5 x 2, pitch distance of 20 cm, and 100 cm thread length for
double blade turbines. The addition of the number of blades on the Archimedes
screw turbine can affect the resulting output. At 3 watt lamp loading, the maximum
power, torque, and electrical efficiency obtained by the double- blade screw turbine
were 0.29 watts, 0.028 N.m., and 1.51%, respectively, implying that the more blades
on the Archimedes screw turbine, the better the turbine's performance.