SUBMERSED TURBINE BEARINGS

PALIERS DE TURBINE IMMERGES

English Abstract

Hydraulic Turbine Bearings are usually made of low friction material sleeve-
shaft combination,
where the surface in between the shaft and the sleeve is lubricated and cooled
down; either using
closed loop pressurized water or hydraulic fluid and/or pressurized water
using the turbine inlet
water head. The present invention consists of using totally sealed roller
spherical bearing type
assembly and where its lubrication and cooling fluid is totally sealed from
the surrounding. This
invention has the advantage that allows supporting both axial and radial
forces within the same
bearing and offers long life- maintenance free operations.

Claims

Claims:
The embodiments of the invention in which an exclusive property or privilege
is claimed are defined
as follows: Please refer to Figure -2- here above.
1. Bearing assemblies are located at each end of the turbine runner shaft;
2. They consist of spherical roller bearing (1) to guarantee positioning and
guiding of the
turbine runner;
3. The Submersed Turbine Bearing Assembly includes dynamic rotating friction
type floating
seals (7), isolating lubrication and cooling fluids from the surrounding
fluids. Therefore
ensuring sealing for lubrication fluid and ensuring sealing (2) against mixing
with external
non-cooling and non-lubrication fluids;
4. Self priming of the lubrication and cooling fluid and lubrication and
cooling fluid flow
generation and re-circulation closed loop system (3);
5. Auto filtering of particles in the lubrication and cooling fluid (4)
ensuring continuous ISO
cleanliness level, required to ensure proper long operation life bearing;
6. Turbine runner is rotated by the river free flow. Its rotating shaft (5) is
supported by the two
end bearings assemblies;
7. A hydraulically designed channels (6) guides the fluid to lubricate and
cool down the
bearings;
8. Circulation ensures maintaining minimum required cleanliness level in the
bearing hosing
and spherical rollers paths while maintaining an adequate lubrication fluid
film and washing
out heat generated by the bearing operation;
9. Inside bearing sleeve is assembled tight onto the rotating shaft, while the
external sleeve is
sliding inside its housing;
10. Front end bearing can slide inside its housing in order to compensate for
expansion and
mechanical stress generated by material expansion caused by temperature and/or
stress
changes and maintaining allowable overall resulting stress;
11. Lubrication and cooling fluid is using bio-degradable environmentally
friendly fluid type;
12. Orifice (8) to collect residual water that may enter the sealing and
allows evacuating the
water towards a properly sized reservoir with adequate life expectancy;
13. Covers (9) ensure that seal interfaces are under static pressure and not
dynamic pressure.
14. Optional membrane in the protection cover (11) allows balancing the fluid
at the seal level
and pressuring the lubrication and cooling fluid;

Description

CA 02645236 2008-11-03
Invention Title: Submersed Turbine Bearings
Specifications:
The invention is related to hydraulic submersed turbines. It consists of
assembling quantity of two
(2) totally sealed maintenance free bearing assemblies supporting and guiding
the turbine runner
shaft. Its very low friction bearing assemblies are submersed at approximately
15 meters depth. The
bearing assemblies allow precise rotation of the turbine runner while
minimizing frictions and
ensuring perfect handling of both static and dynamic loads generated by the
operation of the turbine-
electrical generator group. The invention has a built-in self priming, auto
filtering of particles in the
lubrication and cooling fluid. It also has a built-in lubrication and cooling
fluid flow generation and
re-circulation closed loop system that allows optimized operation and
increases of life cycle of the
rotating components while eliminating external pump and filter systems often
used to maintain
lubrication and cooling fluid required properties.

Representative Drawing