I saw a BBC TV show hosted by Guy Martin , a UK motorcycle racer .well known in UK .
He went to Gayle Mill while under restoration , to help work on the water turbine.
It was installed in the 1800s , it has a turbine wheel similar to a small australian "Onga" pump ...which I had to replace the bearings yesterday!!
in this cutaway drawing below it shows fairly close to the real thing.
http://www.victorianweb.org/technology/ir/14.html
it has a sluthe directed to the top on the housing and then on both sides of the main housing it has 2 (in total) out lets that come out from central and then curve down through the floor go to the river water level and are submerged
so you have the force of the water acting on the turbine , then you have the force of the falling water (x2) AFTER its passed the turbine , and the outlets are submerged making it an air tight SYPHON!!!
this thing makes no noise , its absolutely brilliant and of course theres very little info of this concept in hydraulics , I did a check
http://www.gaylemill.org.uk/workshops1
they had to replace a bolt in the 1980s , hows that for maintainence? conventional turbines suffer from cavitation damage.
while searching for info I found another bit of excellence!! this only needs 70 cm of fall , and no wonder , its brilliant
http://blog.hasslberger.com/2007/06/water_vortex_drives_power_plan.html
anyone with flat land and a stream should give this consideration
enjoy...
The T turbine could be called another water wheel , but NO , it replaced a water wheel and increased the HP by 3 times. its smaller and has more power , that is clever engineering.
but then again the Hoover dam is a free energy device , its just that the owners/share holders sell the energy but the engineering they use for the Hoover is archaic and destructive to the environment
wind turbines are the same old technology just using blades