Iran Unveils First Homegrown Water Turbine
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran has made its first indigenous water turbine and installed it in a hydropower plant at a dam in the western province of Kurdistan, Managing Director of Iran Water and Power Resources Company (IWPRC) said.
"In the construction of the hydropower plant of Azad Dam, such important parts as the (water) turbine and the governor were for the first time designed domestically," Mohammad Reza Rezazadeh said.
Before this project, Rezazadeh stressed, foreign companies used to undertake the design phase in such constructions.
He said that Iranian engineers managed to design, build, and install all parts of the turbine inside the country for the first time.
Rezazadeh also announced that the water turbines installed in the 10-MW plant in Azad Dam are Francis turbines with horizontal axis and nominal speed range of 1000 rpm.
The Francis turbine is a type of water turbine with an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts.
Francis turbines are the most common water turbines in use today. They operate in a water head from 40 to 600 m and are primarily used for electrical power production. The electric generators which most often use this type of turbine, have a power output which generally ranges just a few kilowatts up to 800 MW.
Earlier last year, Iran had joined the club of countries in the world that produce 25 Megawatt gas turbines. Iran is now among the fewer than 10 countries in the world that can manufacture this kind of turbines.
The country's electricity industry ranks 14th in the world and first in the Middle East in terms of electricity generation by having an installed power generation capacity of 67,806 MW.
