| dc.description.abstract | Hydropower has been predicted to be one of the most investment-worthy industries in the renewable energy sector for sustainable development. But the main challenge hydropower projects are facing globally in terms of economic, technical and ecological aspects is sediment deposition in the reservoir. The efficiency of sediment management will largely influence the future market potential of the hydropower industry as the sediments directly affect the live storage of reservoir and the turbine life, which ultimately affects the revenue generation. Therefore, sediment management planning and implementation have become crucial to keep hydropower energy sustainable.
The present study studies the Binga Hydropower Plant reservoir located in the Agno River in the northern part of the Philippines. Sedimentation in Binga reservoir is very high leading to a significant reduction in the storage capacity and the delta formed is moving towards intake and spillway, posing threat to the intake. Hence, this thesis studies flow conditions and sediment deposition patterns for bed load with flood discharge of 4000 m3/s and the study was based on data of a physical hydraulic model established in the laboratory. Also, Aiming to find an optimal location of SBT intake, studies of suspended sediment load in prototype scale have been carried out with numerical modeling in a 3D CFD numerical model, SSIIM 1.
Hydraulic simulation was performed for two discharges 4000 m3/s and 400 m3/s in SSIIM 1 and the velocity was validated with physical hydraulic model data measured using ADV. In the calibrated model, bed load sediment simulation was carried out in model scale for eight hours with time-series input of discharge and sediment inflow. The hydraulics and sediment deposition erosion pattern exhibited reasonable similarity with physical hydraulic model results.
An up-scaled geometry was used to study the prototype scale hydraulics and suspended load simulation. Fine sediments with the size range of 0.2 mm to 0.002 mm were used in the study and the simulation was performed for twenty-four hours with time-series input of discharge and sediment concentration. The sediment simulation conducted showed that major sedimentation occurs in the upstream reaches of the reservoir which indicated that the possible locations of effective SBT intake shall be in the initial narrow section at the reservoir upstream. However, the results of the SBT intake location option study do not clearly picture sediment release by SBT to be most effective as its discharge capacity was assumed to be fixed in the current study. Thus, a detailed study with optimization of SBT is recommended. | |