Paddle wheel

A paddle wheel is a form of waterwheel or impeller in which a number of paddles are set around the periphery of the wheel. It has several uses, some of which are:

  • Very low-lift water pumping, such as flooding paddy fields at no more than about 0.5 m (20 in) height above the water source.[1]
  • To move and mix algae culture in the raceway ponds used for algaculture.
  • Propulsion of watercraft (as a paddlewheel)
  • Low head hydro power (as a waterwheel)
  • Flow sensors
  • Aerators
A paddle wheel aereator used in an Indonesian shrimp pond

The paddle wheel is an ancient invention but is still used today in a wide range of industrial and agriculture applications.

Physics

The paddle wheel is a device for converting between rotary motion of a shaft and linear motion of a fluid. In the linear-to-rotary direction, it is placed in a fluid stream to convert the linear motion of the fluid into rotation of the wheel. This rotation can be used as a source of power, or as an indication of the speed of flow. In the rotary-to-linear direction, it is driven by a prime mover such as an electric motor or steam engine and used to pump a fluid or propel a vehicle such as a paddle-wheel steamer or a steamship.

gollark: Why are you worried about exposure of your home IP?
gollark: Or try other browsers.
gollark: Try removing the proxy_set_header Host line?
gollark: You can access it on that domain with the port in the URL from internally, right?
gollark: I'm just wildly guessing here, but possibly it doesn't like that you're just serving regular HTTP on that.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.