Low head Pico hydro resources have considerable potentials in many regions of the world and with
increasing demand of energy, use of such capacities is quite necessary. Pico hydro plants are usually
isolated and installed in remote areas. One of the main problems of utilizing these potentials especially in
the developing countries is that routine turbines are insufficient or proper turbines are expensive. A
suitable alternative for solving this problem is use of axial pumps in the reverse mode instead of the
routine turbines. In this mode, the flow and rotation direction of the pump are reversed, and consequently
hydraulic behavior of the pump is changed. In this study, an industrial axial pump has been
simulated in the reverse mode by computational fluid dynamics. To do so, continuity and Reynolds
Averaged NaviereStokes equations coupled with Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model were solved using
NUMECA software, and characteristic curves were obtained. To validate numerical results, a test setup for
measuring the head, flow rate and power was built and the pump was tested in the reverse mode. It is
shown that there is a good coincidence between the numerical and experimental results. Also, the axial
pump can properly work as a turbine in the low head Pico hydro plants.