After a successful completion of the Phase 1 of the EIT RawMaterials Accelerator program, Easy Hydro has been selected to continue to the following Phase 2. As a part of this, during the coming 6 months we will be assisted by EIT’s Business Developers to further refine our business plan and marketing strategy.
A perfect way to consolidate Easy Hydro’s business in the raw materials sector!
The Easy Hydro team has participated in a research focused on the quantification of the available energy recovery in water networks including drinking water, wastewater and irrigation across several EU countries as part of the REDAWN project. A total energy recovery potential ranging between 480 – 822 GWh was estimated, which would decrease the energy consumption of the water networks between 1.7 and 13%. This would significantly reduce the CO2 emissions associated with the water industry, whilst actively contributing to net energy efficiency gains.
Very interesting results, which will foster the adoption of micro hydropower solutions to counteract the effects of climate change and advance the EU targets regarding decarbonizing the economy.
The final document is available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/13/7/899
The key advantages of choosing a pump-as-turbine for small scale hydro power generation are:
Get in touch with Easy Hydro by emailing us at info@easyhydrosolutions.com or visiting our website https://easyhydrosolutions.com/ .
Press Release
Easy Hydro, a spinout from Trinity College Dublin, has been awarded a €49,000 Booster grant from the EU consortium EIT RawMaterials to build a pilot energy recovery installation at Tara Mines in Navan. As a part of a collaboration between Easy Hydro and the site owner Boliden, a novel type of water turbine will be commissioned to recover energy from the underground water mains carrying fresh water down the mine.
It has been decided to place the Easy Hydro turbine in parallel to an existing pressure reducing station on a DN150 pipeline carrying clean water from the surface.
With an average flow rate of 22 l/s and a pressure drop of 21 bar, the turbine will output up to 30 kW of clean renewable energy resulting in yearly savings of over 200 MWh of electricity otherwise imported from the grid. Such amount of energy corresponds to the annual consumption of nearly 50 average Irish households.
The proposed installation will directly offset over 60 tons of CO2 per year, and such technology if replicated over a number of other similar locations within the same mine has the potential to significantly reduce the current carbon footprint of Tara Mines.
Besides, the expected payback time of the installation is between 2 and 3 years and considering an equipment life of 25 years the generated energy will feature an extremely low Levelized Cost Of Electricity (LCOE).
This work is highly relevant to our wider sustainability agenda and compatible with the underground mining operations carried out by Boliden Tara Mines
Paschal Walsh, Boliden’s Environmental, Health, Safety & Energy Manager
This project in collaboration with Boliden y EIT RawMaterials is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the applicability of the unique Easy Hydro energy recovery technology in the mining sector
Daniele Novara, Easy Hydro’s Managing Director
Small-scale and modular hydropower turbines which can be installed along existing pipe networks. Such turbines can be placed in a bypass of an existing valve, e.g. pressure reducing valves, control valves, tank inflow regulation valves. The turbine can thus transform the dissipated pressure into usable electricity, with power outputs ranging from a few kilowatts up to hundreds of kilowatts.
The type of turbine adopted is reliable and widely tested and consists of standard pumps running in reverse as turbines (PAT – Pumps As Turbines) which only cost a fraction of a conventional custom-made hydro turbine.
The modernization of hydraulic infrastructure in irrigation, from traditional channels and ditches to pressurized networks, has led to significant improvement of the water efficiency (conveyance and consumption). Nevertheless, this fact brought a dramatic increase of the energy consumption, causing impacts on farming margins and operational costs.
On-demand irrigation networks have the main advantage of offering continuous water availability, giving a great flexibility to farmers for irrigating. However, the occurrence of areas with excess pressure, which must be dissipated in some way, has become more frequent. Micro-hydropower turbines for energy recovery arise as an attractive solution to counteract the negative impacts due to the high energy cost of the process. Given the seasonality of the activity, cost-effective solutions are in dire need and hydropower stands out as a technology capable of bringing electricity to remote places with no grid connection where an excessive water pressure to be dissipated within an irrigation pipe.
The rights to use the pump-as-turbine selection software has been granted to the Venture by Trinity College Dublin.
The selection software enables an accurate selection of the most suitable hydraulic pump (end-suction, inline, multistage, split-case) to work as a turbine for any given site. Until now, the available alternatives were either experimentally testing many different pumps in reverse or performing a numerical CFD simulation to predict their performances – both extremely time and resource consuming methods.
Screenshot of exemplary results from the software.
The 3 kW peak pico pump-as-turbine designed by the Easy Hydro team has been operating for the last 12 months. The turbine is located at the inlet of a gravity-fed raw water supply line, and contributes to reducing the energy demand of the adjacent treatment works by nearly 20%.
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