Microturbine & Micro Hydro Turbine : Buying & Usage Guide

Possibly you noted that nowadays on Ebay, Amazon Made in China Microturbine and Micro Hydro Turbines are selling as DIY things. As they lack guide, here is a Microturbine Micro Hydro Turbines buying & using guide. The working principle is closer to our bigger DIY project real electricity generating with washing machine motor from flowing water. That project peoples seriously using, but Microturbine specially except giving fun, educational demonstration lack any usage. However, we are trying to make it for using for somewhat usable power resource. Micro Hydro Turbines are made of plastic and costs lesser than Steam/Gas Microturbine which are intended for handing steam to make power and made of brass.

Microturbine & Micro Hydro Turbine Buying Guide

Micro Hydro Turbine looks like those water flow sensor module for Arduino but Micro Hydro Turbine likely to have only 2 wires – positive and negative. It is very important to make sure that you are buying a Micro Hydro Turbine, not Water Flow Sensor module. Both has two threaded pipes to attach water source and water outlet. So basically you can add them with plain tap and add a DC voltage meter to view the voltage of electricity generated. You can watch video on YouTube by searching with key phrases like “Micro Hydro Turbine”. Water flow sensor module for Arduino, Raspberry Pi will have 3 wires like that of servo motor.

Buying Microturbine for powering steam only needs the idea that the motor/generator must be present in the unit, not only the part which converts steam to mechanical rotating energy. It is actually very difficult to find the small parts to attach with a motor/generator. You can change the motor/generator later.

It is not very difficult to create the whole stuff as DIY project. But we are not taking about that way.

Microturbine & Micro Hydro Turbine Using Guide

You can argue that you need no guide to attach Micro Hydro Turbine in kitchen or toilet. But how you’ll get steam to power Microturbine? There are two ways. One is Indian DIY way – attaching a copper pipe in pressure cooker and usually heating the pressure cooker with filling with water like cooking. Technically it is possible to cook and run the project. But most girls typically dislike messing up their serious projects with our projects.

Another way is the way from which the Indian DIY way of steam supply originated – cappuccino expresso coffee machine. They usually have local production across the whole earth which gives paranormal force of steam. They are professional grade machines and repairable. If you are doing it with beautiful looking cappuccino expresso coffee machine for home segment, it is likely that the thing will die faster out of overuse.

Now, the power generated actually needs stabilisation. There is too much up down of voltage to use. For that reason, at minimum you need something like a breadboard power supply unit – which is cheap and easily available on Amazon, Ebay. Two bridge rectifiers ideally needed in both directions because it will also functions as a blocking diode to prevent back-flow of current into the motor to spin it – that will be funny if you are going to charge a battery!

The output power better to be directed towards capacitors that can cycle many more times than rechargeable batteries. Although capacitors will store less overall energy, they can have much greater power output than batteries of the same size because of their extremely low internal resistance. You can see our demo of how we used a capacitor to light up a diode.