Background: Providing universal access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in remote Nepal remains challenging. We investigated WASH conditions and their association with children's nutritional status, intestinal parasitic infections and diarrhoea. Methods: Data was collected through a cross-sectional survey of 1427 households, including questionnaires, observations, stool analysis, anthropometry, water quality measurements, and assessment of clinical signs of nutritional deficiencies. Results: We found 55.5% of children were undernourished, 63.9% had clinical signs of nutritional deficiencies, 51.1% had intestinal parasitic infections and 52.2% had diarrhoea. Multivariate mixed logistic regression analysis revealed a statistically significant negative association between undernutrition and socioeconomic level, with adjusted odds ratios (AOR) of 0.70 (95%-CI = 0.43-1.11) and 0.43 (95%-CI = 0.25-0.75) for high and intermediate levels compared to the lowest level. Undernutrition was negatively associated with regular deworming of children (AOR = 0.44, 95% CI = 0.20-0.94), food supplements (AOR = 0.57, 95% CI = 0.38-0.84), household's own food production (AOR = 0.67, 95% CI = 0.46-0.97) and personal hygiene (AOR = 0.83, 95% CI = 0.51-1.35). Nutritional deficiency was negatively associated with handwashing after cleaning a baby's bottom (AOR = 0.60, 95% CI = 0.40-0.92) and cleanliness of caregiver's hands (AOR = 0.61, 95% CI = 0.41-0.89) and positively associated with keeping animals inside the house overnight (AOR = 1.71, 95% CI = 1.17-2.51) and the presence of total coliforms in the drinking water source (AOR = 10.44, 95% CI = 1.61-67.4). Diarrhoea was positively associated with intermittent water supply (AOR = 2.72, 95% CI = 1.18-6.31) and the presence of a mud floor (AOR = 2.29, 95% CI = 1.20-4.37) and negatively associated with cleanliness of the toilet (AOR = 0.68, 95% CI = 0.47-0.98), and the cleanliness of children's hands (AOR = 0.62, 95% CI = 0.40-0.96).

Despite the initiation of the master plan, envisioned by the government of Nepal, complete electrification of rural Nepal still seems over ambitious for quite a long time. Thus Micro Hydropower Plants (MHP) can still be very effective for rural electrification. Decades of manufacturing of same type turbines have saturated the turbine manufacturing industries of Nepal, which demands for some new innovations and that could be the introduction of Francis turbine in Nepalese MHP. It’s undeniable that there are umpteen opportunities for the turbine manufacturers to manufacture and install the Francis turbines in Nepalese MHP. The feasibility studies performed by different institutions and the government policy strengthen the claim. In addition to that, data received from, NMHDA and a local turbine manufacturing industry suggest that there are abundant sites suitable for installation of Francis turbine. This paper illustrates the need of introducing the Francis turbine in Nepalese MHP and discusses about the opportunities available for the turbine manufacturers to enter into the market of Francis turbines for micro hydro and subsequently for larger hydropower projects in the near future. The challenges associated with the introduction of Francis turbine in MHP are highlighted.

In Nepal, sediment erosion is a major cause of hydro-turbine failure. Every year turbine parts expose to water got eroded and failed ultimately resulting in loss of efficiency as well as increase in the repair cost. For repair of these eroded surfaces welding is quit famous in Nepal due to low cost to build up the eroded surface however specific welding pattern on the eroded surfaces has not been used which results low strength in repaired equipment. In this paper, the study of the relation of the welding pattern on the erosion rate had carried out taking the Francis turbine blade of Dhamile Khola (14 kW) as reference. Experimental analysis was adopted for studying the effect of welding pattern on erosion rate through laboratory tests. Four different welding patterns on four different specimens were developed and accelerated tests were carried out in the Rotating Disc Apparatus (RDA) at Turbine Testing Lab (TTL), Kathmandu University. Furthermore, erosion pattern on forged blades were compared with the CFD analysis carried out on same blade which is similar. After an operation time of 1050 minutes, the extent of wear was found significantly less in the test specimen with right inclined welding pattern taking material loss as a basis for comparison. The aim of this paper is to provide a specific welding pattern with relatively less erosion rate during the repair and maintenance of the sediment eroded surface of the runners.

No abstract

Spiral casing is an important component of Francis turbine for even distribution of kinetic and potential energy of water so as to achieve the required reaction for better performance of the runner. Optimal design and analysis of spiral configuration is challenging, especially when the turbine is operating in a low head range due to the necessity of a large cross-sectional area of the casing to accumulate the large flow. The main objective of this study is to design the best configuration of cross section of spiral casing which have a very minimal pressure loss and can provide required inlet flow condition for stay vanes. For this, spiral casing configurations following free-vortex theory with different cross sections i.e. circular, trapezoidal and square are designed and analysed numerically. Pressure, radial and tangential velocity distributions are compared for different cross section of spiral casing suitable for micro hydro applications. Considering the ease of manufacturing, flexibility of dimension adjustments and comparable performance with that of the circular spiral casing, trapezoidal casing is found to be an appropriate alternative for such applications.