World’s Highest Intake Tower Capped

The intake tower of the Lianghekou Hydropower Station on the Yalong River in Southwest China's Sichuan province completed concreting on May 13, completing the capping process of the world's highest hydropower station intake tower.

Located in Yajiang county of Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture, the intake tower was built by a consortium of Sinohydro Bureau 14 Co., Ltd. and Sinohydro Bureau 16 Co., Ltd. of Power Construction Corporation of China (POWERCHINA).

Taking about 560,000 cubic meters of concrete, the intake tower is 115 meters high, equaling the height of a 40-storey building, and is 159.8 meters wide.

As it stands on a snow-covered plateau of more than 3,000-meter altitude, the intake tower was hard to build, especially considering the strong winds between February and June and low winter temperatures.

What was worse was that the tower has a high body and is surrounded by mountains in three directions, making transport of the concrete difficult.

Therefore, varieties of devices and machines like a full bobbin, belt conveyor and concrete spreader were used during construction.

Innovative methods were also developed which solved such problems as cracking caused by a huge temperature difference between day and night.

The capping laid a solid foundation for the plant's impounding in October this year and the operation of its first generator unit in August 2021.

Construction of the intake tower faced severe natural conditions like strong winds and extremely cold weather. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]

(Executive editor: Wang Ruoting)