Investigation of Hydraulic Modification and Redesigning of Priming Process of Water Pumping Stations (Case study: Veis Pumping station of Khuzestan province)

Agricultural water pumping stations has an important role in water conveyance and distribution, increasing energy and the agricultural water productivity Due to its high application in most of irrigation and drainage networks. So incidence of any problem for these installations will cause operation problems and water resources losses. In this study, lack of supplying the proper elevation in the suction part of pumps, was identified as one of the important operational problems, which have harmful consequences such as disability of pumps, reducing the pumping capacity, economic losses and water users’ dissatisfaction. Reducing the water elevation in the pumping station occurs because of lack of attention to the hydraulic conditions, improper location of pumping stations and changes in the normal condition of river. Some problems in many cases, could be solved and be modified by the proper hydraulic methods which are complying with the geometric conditions of region. In this study for Veis pumping station, after simulation of priming hydraulic from river by SOBEK model, appropriate curative methods were proposed by change in the topography of the river and they were compared with in-situ corrective method. Then, influence of some effective hydraulic parameters on increasing of water level in pumping suction such as intake canal slope, distance between pumping station and intake port, water level curve changes in the pumping phase and changes in river flow regime were investigated. Thus the problem of pumping stations’ priming on the design and operation phases were evaluated and effective parameters and appropriate criteria are presented for the proposed corrective method.