CFD investigation for turbidity spikes in drinking water distribution networks
Creators: name: Hossain, Alamgir
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: Drinking water distribution networks such as South East Water Ltd. (SEWL), Melbourne Water, Sydney Water, etc. are supposed to transport only dissolved matter rather than a few visible particles. However, it is almost impossible to make the drinking water free from suspended solid particles. The ability to determine the origins of these particles varies between different water supply systems, with possible sources being from catchment, treatment processes, biofilm growth within the water supply pipes, and corrosion products. Improvement of our understanding of the complex hydrodynamic behavior of suspended and/or deposited particles involved in these distribution pipe networks requires mathematical and physical models. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) along with analytical turbulent model is one of the most popular mathematical techniques, which has the ability to predict the behavior of complex flows for such multiphase flow applications. This study has been completed mainly in two steps. A CFD investigation was carried out to predict the hydrodynamic behavior of turbid particle flowing through a horizontal pipe networks including loop consist of bends and straight pipes. Furthermore, an extended analytical model was re-developed for the liquid-solid system to look at the similar behavior of the solid particles flowing in a turbulent field. These two parallel studies will provide better understandings about the turbidity spikes movements in the distribution networks. A comprehensive CFD investigation was carried out for particle deposition in a horizontal pipe loop consisting of four 900 bends in a turbulent flow field. A satisfactory agreement was established with the experimental data as validation. This was a steady state multi-particle problem, which helped to understand the deposition characteristics for different particle sizes and densities at upstream and downstream sides of the bends as well as its circumference. Particle concentration was seen high at the bottom wall in the pipe flow before entering the bends, but for the downstream of bend the deposition was not seen high at the bottom as seen in upstream of bend rather inner side of the bend wall (600 skewed from bottom). The larger particles clearly showed deposition near the bottom of the wall except downstream. As expected, the smaller particles showed less tendency of deposition and this was more pronounced at higher velocity. Due to the high stream line curvature and associated centrifugal force acting on the fluid at different depths the particles became well mixed and resulted in homogeneous distribution near the bend regions. The hydrodynamic behavior of particles flowing in a turbulent unsteady state flowing through a horizontal pipe was also studied to compare with the drinking water distribution networks data. In this numerical simulation six different flow-profiles and particle-load profiles were used to compute particles deposition and re-entrainment into the systems and to identify the conditions of the deposition and suspension mechanisms. Results showed that after a certain length of pipe and period of time after downward velocity gradient, when the velocity was constants over time, the shear stress was sufficiently high enough to cause the particle deposition on and roll along the bottom wall of pipe wall and created a secondary group of particle peak (called kink). Finally, an extended analytical Turbulent Diffusion Model for liquid-solid phase was developed following an existing gas-liquid turbulence model. This turbulent diffusion model was then compared with the results of the CFD investigation making use of the same boundary conditions. The comparison established good agreement between these two models. The influence of velocity on the particle size distribution was dominant over the influence of the superficial liquid velocity, which was also explained by using the new parameter, velocity ratio. This velocity ratio was defined as the ratio between the free flight and gravitational velocity. Due to some inevitable assumptions used in the analytical model, the results showed typically less deposition as compared with the CFD investigation.