Post-conference Tour to a sediment-separation plant
Being a group of professionals on water resources many of us were invited to inspect the sediment-separation facility of a water supply plant outside Urumuqi. The facility is quite unique, and its operation ingeneous. As the river supplying water to the city has a relatively high gradient, it flows rapidly and carries with it a large amount of coarse sediment. The coarse sediment of fine sand grains must be separated before the water can be used for industrial purposes.
The sediment-separation facility lets the rapid flowing water diverted from the river to run through a funnel-shape concrete structure to create a whirlpool, so that the sediment will be concentrated in the middle of the funnel and to be drained away, leaving the clear water to remain on top, along the outer edge of the funnel, to be used for industrial and municipal purposes.
The plant manager actually stopped the incoming flow to clear the whirlpoot in order to allow us to have a good look at the design of the funnel structure. Prof. Zhou of the Xinjiang Agricultural University, who accompanied us here, explained to us the operation of this facility, and its many advantages. The beauty of this facility was that it required no power for operation, and was totally self-sustained. We were told that 10 such plants were currently in operation, with 10 more to be built, and 13 more in the planning stage.
