Discharge of dense effluents containing suspended solids: A CFD analysis

Inappropriate discharge of dense effluents containing suspended solids, such as effluents from the oil and gas and petrochemical industries along Persian gulf is causing severe adverse effects on marine life and habitants’ health. Therefore, it is of great importance to design environmentally friendly systems for the discharge of such effluents. In this study, a computational fluid dynamics model using the two-phase Mixture model and SST k-ω turbulence scheme is proposed to model the discharge of effluents containing suspended solids by submerged inclined jets which can lead to high mixing and dilution of pollutants in the receiving areas. The results showed a good precision of the model in the validation phase, which also had a significant advantage over the integrated models. In the case of modeling effluents containing solid particles, contrary to geometric quantities, the dilution pattern was not well predicted. The results of this study can be used by engineers and practitioners to design environmentally friendly discharge systems to dilute dense effluents in the surface water bodies.