Pelton Wheel

's original October 1880 patent]] Lester Allan Pelton was born in Vermillion, Ohio in 1829. In 1850, he traveled overland to take part in the California Gold Rush. Pelton worked by selling fish he caught in the Sacramento River. In 1860, he moved to Camptonville, a center of placer mining activity. At this time many mining operations were powered by steam engines which consumed vast amounts of wood as their fuel. Some water wheels were used in the larger rivers, but they were ineffective in the smaller streams that were found near the mines. Pelton worked on a design for a water wheel that would work with the relatively small flow found in these streams. By the mid 1870s, Pelton had…

Nozzles direct forceful, high-speed streams of water against a series of spoon-shaped buckets, also known as impulse blades, which are mounted around the outer rim of a drive wheel (also called a runner). As the water jet hits the blades, the direction of water velocity is changed to follow the contours of the blades. The impulse energy of the water jet exerts torque on the bucket-and-wheel system, spinning the wheel; the water jet does a "u-turn" and exits at the outer sides of the bucket, decelerated to a low velocity. In the process, the water jet's momentum is transferred to the wheel and hence to a turbine. Thus, "impulse" energy does work on the turbine. Maximum power and efficiency…