Technologies and experience with monitoring sediments for protecting turbines from abrasion

Abrasion of turbines by sediments is a constant threat in high head and high sediment load situations. It is widely recognized that larger grains cause abrasion, although no consensus on a critical size exists. Grain hardness plays a second key role. Thus monitoring of sediment concentration is highly desirable, particularly with attention paid to the large grains. This has recently become possible with LISST instruments that use laser diffraction (LD) technology. These in-line instruments measure multi-angle laser light scattering, which is converted to a particle size distribution in a pre-defined size range. In order to reach high concentrations, the instruments incorporate auto-dilution capability. The data are transmitted to the control room. Provided software displays concentration history in up to 4 size classes, and the software is capable of generating alarms when sufficiently high concentrations occur. Since no definition exists for this sufficiently high concentration, in this paper we propose an objective criterion based on the rate of revenue generation contrasted with rate of cost of turbine repair. This simple idea helps guide the plant operator to set shut-down thresholds during sediment transport events. We also introduce a lower cost, high-frequency pulsed acoustic sensor for sediment monitoring. The rather lower accuracy of this device is offset by its lower cost that is suitable for small plants.