China's Man Made Marvels: World's Biggest Hydro Works 中国建筑奇观 南水北调

21st century China is a nation on the rise its economy and industry growing at lightning speed but the country faces a huge challenge the north is drying up China's growth is threatened from warping found that occur at shipping northern China's water shortage is affecting its social and economic development the situation is critical enter one of the most ambitious engineering projects of modern times the south to north water diversion project is absolutely essential for solving north China's water shortage a record-breaking chain of waterways dams tunnels and giant aqueducts to rescue China's parched North nothing has been tried on this scale before it's a giant gamble China's engineers are stepping into the unknown [Music] 6 a.m. on the outskirts of Beijing two researchers carry out a reconnaissance in China's battle with nature their task to monitor may Jing's underground water reserves walnut honda is here you either we collect water pressure and temperature data from these auto test points in order to record changes in water levels underground in Beijing let's have a froma Java what it'll do it for what kind are they were silver so you can be a heart of young today's news isn't good the results are further evidence of a worrying trend research from across northern China shows water reserves are shrinking supplies are stretched to the limit China's battle with water is a result of its geography and climate irrigated by some of Asia's largest rivers southern China is green and fertile but the north is a different story few rivers and low rainfall make this region of China naturally dry and semi-arid add intensive agriculture rapid urban development in climate change to the mix and the situation becomes critical if nothing is done scientists estimate by 2030 northern China's taps will completely run dry Sartain payphone sits here the shortage of water in northern China is caused by the region's dry climate population growth and economic and social development I made the situation even worse something must be done and fast so enter the three-pronged south-north water diversion project still in the planning stage the western room will divert water from the antsy headwaters to replenish the Yellow River the twelve hundred and sixty-seven kilometer central route will divert water from the Han River to the northern cities of Beijing and Tianjin following the course of the Grand Canal the eastern route will convey water to northeast China [Music] every year the project will divert the equivalent to 570 times the water held by the Caspian Sea the world's largest lake pushed flushed and carried by a chain of giant constructions which together make up the world's largest building project oh man Jos all attached if we don't move water from other regions and build the South North water diversion project it'll be impossible to support economic and social development in the north the most important link in the chain is the source of the central route [Music] dan Genco reservoir will be the giant water tank feeding the taps of northern China it holds enough water to supply New York City for 13 years that's not enough to quench the North's thirst the reservoirs capacity must increase by a massive 60 percent but the Dan Genco dam is too small to hold that amount of water it needs to grow in height by an extra four storeys building a new dam is like drawing on a blank piece of paper you desire how you like but to enlarge your Dan you have to first carefully study the old one before putting pen to paper Jiang Xiao ting is the dams chief engineer he must enlarge the 50 year old dam using new concrete [Music] the problem is different vintages of concrete don't mix when poured and setters one structure standard construction concrete can withstand hundreds of kilograms of pressure [Music] but if new concrete is poured directly on top of old it's a different story [Music] COCs show me what this experiment shows that despite concrete being strong if we pour new concrete on top of old with our surface treatment the combination is fragile and weak it breaks apart with very little force scaled up this weakness would spell disaster [Music] in 1928 the st. Francis dam in California collapsed releasing a wave that swept everything before it 450 people were killed newsreel depictions showed the horrifying scale of the disaster later analysis revealed the dams failure was due in large part to the poor join between its concrete wall and the Rock Valley this scenario is engineered Jiang's worst nightmare he knows he must forge an indestructible bond between the old and new portions of the Dan Genco dam so he's brought in the demolition guys beginning in 2005 teams of explosive experts blew apart the dams upper layers and painstakingly scoured long groups across its face next jiangs engineers drilled thousands of steel rods into the dams broken up exterior together the chiseled grooves and steel rods anchored the fresh concrete poured on top creating a super strong bond between the old and new structures over four years the dam grew centimeter by centimeter both in thickness and height eventually reaching the 50 story target in 2009 the first building block of the world's most ambitious construction project is complete Jiang reflects on his team's work watch a lagoon Tony among natural video - yeah when the tangent code I'm tightening project is complete we hired your engineers will be very proud to see water from the Han and Yangtze rivers helping the people of Beijing and Tianjin jaw hurts the auditor the central route of the water diversion project is off to a good start from Dan Janko it's downhill all the way to Beijing but over on the eastern route engineers face an uphill battle literally to get the water to northern China [Music] Dornan Shandong Province the engineers building the hang drunk pumping station are up early [Music] nincada I'm your attorney look at my off balance I see you colluded with Olivia but you never show up [Music] today marks a crucial milestone in the project to save northern China from drought con you yeah my own economy love you the south north water diversion project will eventually divert almost 50 billion tons of water each year by a three routes from the wet south to the parched north [Music] Engineers hope five state-of-the-art pumps will be the driving force behind the projects eastern route if the delivery goes smoothly for half of its fourteen hundred and sixty seven kilometer length the eastern routes gradient is uphill without help water the engineers want to go north will flow the wrong way their ambitious solution is building 22 pumping stations to push the water in the right direction ninth in the chain is hands wanna it will pump water north into a series of lakes the man in charge of its construction is chief engineer Chou Chou Mao his station must pump water up a steep incline at a rate that would fill three Olympic swimming pools every minute [Music] five pumps at the bottom of the structure will do all the pushing they work by spinning angled blades called impellers these give water enough energy to overcome gravity but pumping that much water 365 days a year makes for one big electricity bill Joe's team must find a way to keep costs to a minimum Omaha monitor during the design of the Hong Kong pumping station everyone wanted to increase the pumps efficiency it's the most important aim of our design a pumps induction motor achieves an efficiency of around 75 percent the rest is lost in friction and heat [Music] [Applause] pantorans engineers needed more than 81 percent efficiency to meet their target they turn to state-of-the-art technology dr. Patrick Lach is a world expert on the mechanics of permanent magnet motors [Music] their components are made from rare super magnetic metals [Music] the result is more energy is converted into motion put head-to-head with an induction motor these rare metals make a dramatic difference to efficiency so this motors they have the similar speed delivering the same talk and the two readings shows me that the permanent metal machines is 50 percent more efficient than that of the in for the cost-conscious designers of hangs one installing permanent-magnet powered pumps was a no-brainer [Music] what I believe is really picking the wallet half the world is whatever so to move for our journey was silver yet it survived but before they're up and running Chao needs to get his hands on which means moving 300 tons of pump worth millions of dollars off the delivery barge and onto dry land [Music] to make the move Chow's ordered a giant 80 ton crane [Music] he holds his breath as the first 60 ton pump is lifted into the air [Music] I will live in jeju-do Holland you're sure I never done with you the pump finally touches down in a week's time Chow and his team will begin installation that they've on a UH non-terminal oil economical the coward after the preparation comes the installation stage I feel excited because after that construction of the pumping station is more or less complete by sunset the last of the pumps is offloaded onto terra firma construction on the eastern route stays bang on schedule [Music] but the central route has reached one of the most challenging obstacles on its 1,200 kilometers Ernie the SHA River a complex unpredictable waterway with tough geology to cross it engineers must design a record-breaking solution [Music] northern China October 2009 the worst drought here in 60 years has dried up riverbeds withered crops and left millions facing severe water shortages with rainfall decreasing year by year and groundwater reserves at critical levels the region's future is under threat China's remedy is on a grand scale a network of manmade water ways to convey billions of tons of water from the lush South to the dry north the project central route will take water 1200 kilometres from Dan Janko reservoir to Beijing just 200 kilometers into the journey it meets the Chartres River in the dry season the char doesn't look much of an obstacle but this narrow River is at the center of a much wider geographical feature from the air the extent of the rivers wet season meanderings is revealed the best way to take the diverted water across is by a giant aqueduct high above the char that spans the entire area step forward doubt inquire of the Hernan Water and Power Engineering company often on our survey deals our moment the team are designing an aqueduct with the best combination of strength and low weight to span the shar-pei hawala they have millennia of raised aqueduct construction as inspiration two thousand years ago Roman engineers built hundreds of kilometres of them to quench the thirst of the Empire cities Rome itself had a network of rectangular channel back with ups supplying the capital with daily water [Applause] [Music] in the 21st century Chinese engineers evolved the tried-and-tested Roman blueprint with the Sal River aqueduct its flow capacity was a Chinese record Jones designed to cross the char must go even further he must rewrite the record books once again and double the sales flow capacity to a rape that can fill an Olympic swimming pool in 6.5 seconds that means it's got to be big but the shyest geology is so soft that a heavy aqueduct will sink into the ground unless it has massive reinforcement and that would double the project's cost that's a no-go so jao set his team the challenge of designing an aqueduct that was strong but also very light after months of testing they think they found the answer exchange the traditional rectangular shape for a new profile the u-shape America they teleported and met on the law she we found that a u-shaped aqueduct has many advantages over a rectangular shape structurally it's better at very heavy loads and is stronger hydrodynamically it's better and doing construction quality control is easier to achieve the tests reveal that when filled with hundreds of tons of fast flowing water a rectangular designs 90-degree angles have put under extreme stress but the sweeping curve of a u-shaped aqueduct has no stress points allowing construction of stronger and so lighter channels the u-shape approved jazz team pieces together the aqueducts blueprints 200 individual sections each weighing the equivalent of three fully loaded airliners make up two channels supporting them is a series of giant concrete piles so yes we have invested a lot of manpower and energy designing the charr River aqueduct we are looking forward to the completion of the project and seeing the water transferred to the north design complete gel passes the baton to the man responsible for building it chief engineer Wayne Punk way Ella what this product is the most difficult at work time to make a concrete aqueduct of the scale and then install it is unprecedented in China to make matters worse the construction site is hundreds of kilometres from a factory that could prefabricate the aqueduct sections so Wang has to build each one from scratch right here on site launch Amidala each skeleton section requires almost 14,000 steel bars the entire aqueduct rests on the precision of every weld each one is meticulously checked and double-checked after passing Quality Control workers sandwich the steel skeleton between two halves of a mold and pour concrete inside once set they remove the mold and the section is ready for installation for that Wang needs a machine capable of some serious heavy lifting so he's called in the largest crane ever used on a Chinese aqueduct construction project the height of a 13 story building what makes it special are its swiveling wheels that allow it to move to any part of the site and its role in an ingenious installation process the crane will lift each 1200 tons section onto a trolley positioned on top of the aqueduct the trolley then rolls the section down the aqueduct to the installation area when in position a second crane will lift and place each section on top of its support piles this innovative production line will make and install three giant aqueduct sections a week [Music] [Applause] today one has a special visitor for the first time ciao from the design team is on site [Applause] he wants to find out whether his u-shaped design is causing any problems I stole da da da da me to work on your bond already Browns gonna focus on finding people to meet under unity of our Jez Maruyama she's not gonna put it on with you I know why you never thought of anything [Music] after a thorough inspection Chow delivers his verdict what does in here I'm very excited because we're seeing the results of all our hard work once the shower River aqueduct is complete water will pour northwards to Beijing but 150 kilometers downstream lies the biggest obstacle on the central route the mighty Yellow River crossing it will test Chinese engineering prowess to the limit [Music] midday at the Yellow River construction site work has come to a grinding halt [Music] deep underground the giant machine tunneling beneath the riverbed has broken down every minute it's out of action the project falls behind schedule the clock is ticking hey for the engineers and workers on site getting it back up and running is top priority the tunneling is part of the world's largest construction project three man-made waterways that will divert close to 50 billion tonnes of water each year from China's wet south to the dry law 350 kilometres into its journey from Dan Janko to Beijing the water of the central route must cross the mighty Yellow River it's the world's sixth longest waterway and at the intersection with the central route it's 700 meters wide the success of the south north water diversion project depends on finding a way across a job that's fallen to chief engineer sau gen Fung so now I'm Jenny how familiar you know kinda noisy don't know he's implementing an ambitious plan the digging of a pair of eight meter wide tunnels each four kilometres long to convey the equivalent of 1 million bottles of water per second under the Yellow River taken ashore to me what a turn-on ego control this is the most difficult project of worked on we have to take a 30 meter deep tunnel under the river which with all the unexpected problems we're going to encounter it's very challenging the tunnels must take the water downhill under the riverbed and then back up emerging above-ground on the yellow rivers north bank what are those in Hangzhou kind yeah the problem is water doesn't flow uphill their solution to this problem is ingenious in its simplicity [Music] [Applause] common sense suggests that water flows from a high to a low elevation [Applause] but not so obvious is that water in a pipe we'll do this even if the part of its journey it dips below the elevation of its endpoint and is forced to travel uphill [Music] if this is the south side of the tunnel and this is the north side of the tinkle the water's pushed through from one side to the other due to the pressure difference caused by gravity too much work okay that's a little the designers of the Yellow River Crossing took this principle and scaled it up carefully ensuring that the tunnels exit points were lower than their entry points the design in place Sal now needs to dig the two four kilometer tunnels under the Yellow River so he's called in some heavy metal weighing in 980 tons the tunnel-boring machine or TVM drills through the ground using fierce-looking blades mounted on a cutting head judging by its size and mean looks you might think the TBM is unstoppable but as engineer Sowers discovered this mighty machine has an Achilles heel [Music] each year the Yellow River dumps 200 million tons of silt along its course and it turns out this is a TBMs worst nightmare woman ooh Gautama hung with other Giada you could be the biggest challenge for the TBM digging on to the Yellow River is clay this clay is dry but on the ground it's very thick and sticky the clay can stick to the cut head and jam it making digging very difficult who AM la da da la da da ba da da da cunha and today the yellow rivers testing geology is about to give sow a big headache [Music] the TBM has come to a standstill it looks like the cutting head may be jammed oh no I'm glad you're crying are commenting what his only option is to send workers down to find out what's wrong [Music] diagnosing problems with the TBM is a dangerous business to maintain good contact with the cutting surface the TBMs blades are pressurized to three times atmospheric pressure workers must spend time in a hyperbaric chamber to adjust their bodies any mistakes and just like a deep-sea diver they could suffer the bends but it's a process that takes over an hour the project is losing time and money [Music] so that lama engineer sow needs his TBM operational and fast and if that's not bad enough 600 kilometres away scientists grapple with an even bigger problem widespread pollution threatens to derail the entire project Shandong Province eastern China a team of students from Beijing has traveled from the capital to a remote stretch of countryside [Music] their mission is to gather plant and water samples from an innovative biology experiment it could avert a major threat to the south north water diversion project the visionary plan to rescue northern China from crippling drought decades of heavy industry and intensive farming have left Eastern China's water waves polluted with phosphates and nitrates the danger is that the billions of cubic meters of water passing through the project's eastern route will become contaminated making the water undrinkable once it reaches the north [Music] the sampling team is in shandong on the orders of the man who's been given the task of saving the project professor Jung Hwa Jung of North Beijing Electric Power University took a tumble in living toner so sure a thoughtful feel of the Chinese saying goes the purpose of learning is to serve the community if our research can solve this problem my students and I will be delighted his idea is to harness nature to solve the problem terrified of joy the doji by the gate Salon des - des t- e particular plants and microorganisms have the power to filter harmful phosphates and nitrates from water if he can find the correct combination professor Jung thinks these could transform the polluted areas into a purified paradise the theory needs testing in the field so he's planted a giant outdoor laboratory and put it around a crucial section of the eastern route the Lancer Lake it's right in the middle of the most polluted area Nancy Nancy Lake is a very important part of the eastern route it's connected with 53 rivers covering 3000 square kilometers if we don't solve the problem in the Nance Lake then the water quality of the eastern route cannot be guaranteed professor Jiang has created dozens of artificial wetlands packed with pollution busting plants and organisms clustered around the dirty waterways feeding Nancy Lake the scale of the cleanup is unprecedented he needs solid data to show the ecosystem is working which he hopes is locked in the samples the students have brought back from the field trip [Music] [Applause] [Music] they waste no time preparing the first test [Music] [Applause] young Callahan Service Commission yeah when a poor man saw me on the trilogy Giuliana it's hopeful news next the students prepare tests for overall water quality this is the key test to discover if the experimental wetlands are working it's the moment of truth for professor Jang's natural purification factory he needs the result from the spectral analysis to be below 2 milligrams of nitrates per litre after a nervous wait the results are in Georgia feet are hot zone that's hydrogen eight other colored informational missile food for then you have a chain reaction it's been a long haul but professor Jiang and his team have done it our hard work has been worth it I hope that this method can be used widely and with great success the water on the eastern route will now be fit to drink [Music] but the central route still hangs in the balance engineers are in a race against time to repair the huge tunnel boring machine and get the ambitious Yellow River crossing back on track [Music] work on the south north water diversion project has ground to a halt 30 meters underground the giant TBM machine tunneling beneath the Yellow River has broken down its blades a jammed and chief engineer sau is in a race against time to fix them two workers sent to investigate are finishing up inside a hyperbaric chamber necessary before entering the TBMs pressurized forward compartment once outside they instantly see the problem sticky clay has jammed the mechanism time is crucial [Music] it's very important that we fix problems with the cut head quickly that's the only way we'll be able to meet our deadlines [Music] after an hour of back-breaking work the cutter head is clear Sal patiently waits for news male caller [Music] with the TBM operational the tunnel under the Yellow River is back on track [Music] once work is complete the last major obstacle on the central route will be conquered from here water can flow downhill all the way to Beijing across China work continues on the world's largest construction project for the designers and engineers it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience not a video John a ho event after its completion the south north water diversion project benefit huge numbers of your personnel have you proud and honored to be part of this project - then go Tonya Landrieu begotten again it's a great honor for me to participate in such a large project you can fool woman : there he has fulfilled my theoretical curiosity and I feel very happy contributing my knowledge to society I think this is an important stage in my life the south north water diversion project or probably only happened once in Chinese history I'm proud to be the chief engineer of the shower River aqueduct but there still could be delays back at the Yellow River crossing site work has once again come to a halt engineer sow swings into action but this stoppage is no cause for alarm the TBN has finally broken through hsiao and his colleagues have succeeded in crossing the Yellow River it's time for them to enjoy a well-deserved celebration [Music] the biggest reward for Tao and his fellow engineers is snowing thanks to their hard work the world's biggest hydro works will be fully operational by 2014 [Music] this world record-breaking system of aqueducts canals tunnels and pumping stations should ease the specter of drought from China's parched your for the moment at least the people of Beijing and northeast China can be confident their taps won't run dry you

Channel: VideoChinaTV

Views: 53,664

Rating: 4.8890357 out of 5

Keywords: VideoChina, China, documentary

Id: qb_r9WJbtLA

Length: 44min 10sec (2650 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 27 2019