Inside hydroelectric power plants, debris gratings are required to protect the water wheels or turbines against floating debris and to prevent fish from ingressing by putting in place fine-meshed gratings. Weed screens are indispensable at pumping stations, water collectors, water treatment installations, drinking water plants, etc. to stave off floating debris and to act as an added protection barrier. Bar interspaces down as little as just 5 mm are available to prevent the ingress of fish and other aquatic fauna as part of the water intake and other installations further up the processing chain.
The more fine-meshed the weed screen or debris grating, the better the protection. However, this also means the more floating debris is collected up against these gratings. The manual cleaning of the debris gratings is doable only in case of very small or private installations. Modern weed cleaners on the other hand clean the bars fully automatically and autonomously dump the floating debris that has been scraped off into a skip.
