BENEFIT COST ANALYSIS OF AUTOMATIC TRASH RACK CLEANING MACHINE FOR TRASH REMOVAL

Abstract

Hydropower is the one of the important source of power generation. The share of hydropower is 15.22% of total electricity generation in India. Hydropower plant needs trash rack to prevent garbage and floating trashes from entering in water conductor system. It can harm the turbine’s blades which will affect the power production. So trash rack is very important part of setting up a hydropower plant. The garbage stopped by trash rack is gathered in front of trash rack, that start blocking the mechanism of flowing water, which results in loss in head and that in turn reduces the power production. So these trashes must need to be cleaned frequently to prevent loss in head. Manual cleaning is used since many years which is not that effective and also not much frequent. Due to this inconsistent cleaning of trash rack, the trashes stuck with trash rack for a long time which continuously results in loss in head. It has been studied that manual trash rack cleaning is facing many problems like, not having frequent cleaning, needs labors for cleaning, it takes long time etc, All these reasons are causing head loss which reducing the quantity of power generated. Automatic trash rack cleaning machine is not a new invention. It is in use since many years but still it is not the first choice for trash rack cleaning at hydropower plant. There are many hydropower projects which are not using automatic cleaning machine for trash rack cleaning. The reason behind this is the cost for the installation of automatic trash cleaning machine. Research has shown that using automatic trash rack cleaning is much beneficial than having manual cleaning. By having automatic trash rack cleaning machine frequent cleaning of trash rack is possible which decrease loss in head due to sticking of trashes on the trash rack bar screen. The report includes the types of automatic trash rack cleaning machine and the mechanism of their working. It also has the data from some site visit which shows that use of automatic trash rack cleaning machine can increase the power production of any hydropower station.