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A water wheel is a machine for converting the kinetic energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a large wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with numerous blades or buckets attached to the outer rim forming the drive mechanism. Water wheels were still in commercial ...
Old Pelton wheel from Walchensee Hydroelectric Power Station, Germany. The Pelton wheel or Pelton Turbine is an impulse-type water turbine invented by American inventor Lester Allan Pelton in the 1870s. [1] [2] The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, as opposed to water's dead weight like the traditional overshot ...
Watermill of Braine-le-Château, Belgium (12th century) Interior of the Lyme Regis watermill, UK (14th century). A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower.It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering.
Boykin Mill, Boykin, an operating grist mill where meal and grits have been ground by water power for over 150 years. Suber's Corn Mill , Greer , built in 1908 by Walter Hillary Suber. It was constructed on 100 acres (0.40 km 2 ) that was passed down from his father, James Ashfield Suber, who was a Civil War veteran.
Pelton patented his wheel as well as his novel design of the double cup runner, and in 1888 formed the Pelton Water Wheel Company in San Francisco to supply the growing demand for hydropower and hydroelectricity throughout the West and world-wide. [6] 'Pelton' is a trademark name for the products of that company, but the term is widely used ...
The breastshot wheel thus extracts power from both the weight and momentum of the water. Breastshot wheels reached efficiencies of up to 50%, compared to typical undershot wheels around 30%. During a widespread French effort to improve water wheel designs, Jean Charles de Borda discovered the efficiency was a function of the relative speed of ...
The main difference between early water turbines and water wheels is a swirl component of the water which passes energy to a spinning rotor. This additional component of motion allowed the turbine to be smaller than a water wheel of the same power. They could process more water by spinning faster and could harness much greater heads.
Hydropower (from Ancient Greek ὑδρο-, "water"), also known as water power, is the use of falling or fast-running water to produce electricity or to power machines. This is achieved by converting the gravitational potential or kinetic energy of a water source to produce power. [1] Hydropower is a method of sustainable energy production.