DESIGN, OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE OF RAW WATER PUMPING STATIONS

Abstract

Pumping stations are one of the major components of water supply systems, and they consists of one or more pumping units sufficient to handle peak flow and include appropriate number and size of standby pumps to accommodate any downtime (planned or unplanned) of the other pumps. In case of raw water pumping stations specific attention is required for intake structure (because of raw quality of water to be pumped),In normal situation raw water is pumped into a water treatment plant, from where the clean water is pumped into distribution system, to meet the water supply requirements. The water supply requirements increase with time, due to increase • in population. Operation and maintenance problems in raw water pumping stations arise due to the change in demand of water and change in water level of the intake with yearly fluctuation of water level in source of water supply which is normally a river. In this dissertation, a typical case study has been covered, where water treatment plant is already functioning and has adequate capacity to meet the present and future requirement of water demand. However, existing sources of water supply are insufficient to meet the future demand. The additional source of water supply requires a long distance pumping of raw water from a river to the existing water treatment plant. The study includes design of intake structure as well as booster stations (because of long pipeline), beside design of the main pumping station, which should meet the initial water requirement, increasing to meet future water requirement at head to be negotiated, for drinking water to Elobied city, the capital of North Kordofan State of Sudan from White Nile River, by negotiating a distance of over 250 km through two parallel and buried pipelines with booster pumping stations, to overcome a total head, (including friction head loss in the long pipeline) of about 1167m in the initial stage, to meet 3.1 cumec of water demand, which subsequently increased to 2114m to meet increased water demand of 4.5cumec after 15 years by replacing the initial pumps with larger size of pumps, and pumping through the same two parallel buried pipelines, because replacing the 250km long pipelines has not been considered feasible.