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1. Literature Review (Cont’d)
• A HIRARC model for safety and risk evaluation at a hydroelectric power generation
plant
• There are many formal techniques for the systematic analysis of occupational safety and health in general,
and risk analysis in particular, for power generation plants at hydroelectric power stations. This study was
initiated in order to create a HIRARC model for the evaluation of environmental safety and health at a
hydroelectric power generation plant at Cameron Highlands in Pahang, Malaysia. The HIRARC model was
used to identify the primary and secondary hazards which may be inherent in the system which were
determined as a serious threat for plant operation and maintenance. The primary tools of the model consisted
of, generic check-lists, work place inspection schemes which included task observation and interview, safety
analysis as well as accident and incident investigation. For risk assessment, the Likert scale was
complemented by the severity matrix analysis in order to determine the probability and extent of safety and
health at the study power generation plant. These were used to identify and recommend control measures
which included engineering and administrative aspects as well as the use of personal protective equipment
(PPE). A total of forty-one important hazard items were identified in the system at target power generation
plant. These hazards were mainly identified by means of checklists which were sourced from literature and
subsequently customized for the current purpose. Risk assessment was conducted by initially classifying the
hazards into three levels such as Low, Medium and High. Generally 66% of the hazards identified were at
low risk, 32% at medium and 2% at high risk. This indicated that there was sufficient awareness and
commitment to safety and health at the study power station.
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2. Literature Review (Cont’d)
• Proposing a new advanced control technique for micro hydro power plants
• Micro hydropower plants are emerging as a major renewable energy resource today
as they do not encounter the problems of population displacement and environmental
problems associated with the large hydro power plants. However, they require
control systems to limit the huge variation in input flows expected in rivulets over
which these are established to produce a constant power supply. This paper proposes
an electric servomotor as a governor for a micro hydro power plant especially those
plants that are operated in isolated mode. An advanced controller is developed
combining four control schemes for the control of the governor following the concept
that the control action can be split up into linear and non-linear parts. The linear
part of this controller contains an adaptive fast transversal filter (FTF) algorithm
and normalized LMS (nLMS) algorithm. The non-linear part of the controller
incorporates Fuzzy PI and a neural network. The concept behind splitting the
control action is reasoned out and the conditions for stability of the controller are
proved. The new controller has a superior performance compared to other control
schemes.
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3. Literature Review (Cont’d)
• Optimal design of a cogeneration plant for power and desalination taking equipment
reliability into consideration
• This paper presents a method for incorporating equipment reliability considerations
into the optimal design of cogeneration systems for power and desalination. Design
optimization is carried out using thermoeconomic theory using exergy as the
transferable material while equipment reliability is carried out using the state–space
method that uses the Markov process. Procedure for cost allocation of power and
water is described. The procedure is applied in an example cogeneration plant using
a simple gas turbine, heat recovery steam generator and MSF seawater desalination
plant.
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