Chinanews.com, Harbin, August 21st. Title: The craftsman behind the Baihetan Hydropower Station: I send the "White Crane" to Jinsha
China News Service reporter Wang Lin
Recently, the second stage of the impoundment of the Baihetan Hydropower Station on the Jinsha River at the junction of Yunnan and Sichuan began, and it is expected to reach the water level of 800 meters in September.
As the largest hydropower project under construction in the world today, with the highest technical difficulty, behind the Baihetan Hydropower Station is a craftsman from a major country who bravely climbed the world’s hydropower "Mount Everest" and released white cranes to the golden sands.
On June 28, 2021, Baihetan Hydropower Station realized the first batch of generating units to be put into operation, and the key technical indicators created 6 "world firsts".
The Harbin Electric Group is responsible for the development of 8 units of 1 million kilowatts on the right bank, and its No. 14 unit is the world's first unit to achieve full-load power generation of 1 million kilowatts.
Harbin, an old industrial base in Northeast China, made the world remember "Made in China". The reporter followed up and interviewed the ingenuity story behind it.
"Merial Equipment" 9-meter vertical lathe at Harbin Electric Group Electric Company Hydropower Branch Photographed by Lv Pin
The seat ring plane is non-stop 24 hours a day: the operator rotates more than 5,000 times a day
"The merry-go-round is fun, but what would it be like to rotate for 4 hours a day for 2 years and 8 months?" Zhang Yanhui described her work as "riding on a merry-go-round". The seat ring he processed was among all the structural components of the Baihetan turbine. The component with the largest single weight.
If the special plane rotates 24 hours a day, the controller must follow the rotation randomly and complete more than 200 procedures in 8 processes at the same time.
Zhang Yanhui, who is in her 50s, rotates more than 5,000 times a day. At first, he was dizzy and vomiting, and his feet did not walk straight when he landed on the ground. Later, he gradually adapted and became familiar with the road. He experienced hard training like a pilot.
The special plane rotates 100 meters in 1 minute, and the entire construction period will rotate 138,200 kilometers, which is equivalent to circling the earth's equator three and a half times.
Until all the seat rings "checked in" Baihetan, Zhang Yanhui and his colleagues successfully ended the "Equator Detour" trip and took the first weekend holiday in more than two years.
"Merial Equipment" 9-meter vertical car operator Du Ping in front of the console. Photo by Lü Pin
64-year-old "Meritorious Equipment": Witnessing China's equipment manufacturing industry from following to leading
In the hydropower branch of the Harbin Electric Group Motor Company, a 64-year-old "meritorious equipment" stands.
It is a 9-meter vertical lathe exchanged by New China from the former Soviet Union in 1957 through a barter. It was the world's most technologically high-performance heavy-duty lathe at that time, and it witnessed the development history of China's equipment manufacturing industry from following to leading in the world.
With the pace of independent innovation, this "foreign equipment" has long been replaced with a "Chinese core".
The 9-meter vertical lathe, which has been indispensable in the construction of Liujiaxia, Gezhouba, Three Gorges and other projects, still plays a new role in the construction of Baihetan Hydropower Station.
As the sixth-generation controller, Du Ping has been honed for more than 20 years, and now listening to the sound of the machine's operation, he can judge the processing steps.
"The control console was originally marked in Russian, and it has now been changed to Chinese." Du Ping controlled a 9-meter vertical lathe to process the ring plate of the Baihetan Hydropower Station, requiring the flatness of the workpiece to be controlled within 0.02 mm, which is equivalent to the diameter of a hair. Less than a quarter.
Through continuous attempts and adjustments, all the workpieces finally meet the quality requirements.
The world's first long and short blade million kilowatt Baihetan boutique runner Photo courtesy of Harbin Electric Group
Installation of "Heart" for Baihetan Power Station, the world's first runner with long and short blades
"It took me 35 years to participate in two dreams, one is the Three Gorges Hydropower Station, and the other is the Baihetan Hydropower Station." He is Qin Daqing, deputy chief engineer of the Harbin Electric Group Electric Company, a leader in the field of China's hydropower equipment research and development, and led a team to conquer one. An "impossible task".
Qin Daqing, deputy chief engineer of the Harbin Electric Group Electric Company, accepts an interview with a reporter from Chinanews.com. Photo by Lu Pin
The runner is known as the "heart" of the hydropower unit, and is the core component with the most difficult R&D and manufacturing.
In order to decipher the code of "the best overall efficiency of the runner", Qin Daqing and his team took root in the laboratory and kept thinking about going to work, leaving get off work, walking, and eating.
After 8 years of research and development and 7 years of manufacturing, HEC has built the world's first long and short blade million-kilowatt turbine runner, which has achieved wide-load, high-efficiency and stable operation of the turbine.
Qin Daqing said: "The successful development of Baihetan million-kilowatt generating units indicates that China's hydropower equipment manufacturing industry has fully entered the world's hydropower "no man's land". This is behind the ingenuity of countless craftsmen." (End)