Hydrodynamic performance evaluation of screening on the physical unit operations in wastewater treatment based on experimentally validated CFD computations

This paper introduces an evaluation of the hydrodynamic performance of the flow in the screens used on the physical unit operations in a selected full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The numerical study was carried out with the ANSYS Fluent, CFD software by using the three-dimensional (3 D), steady, incompressible flow based on the Reynolds-Average Navier-Stokes equations with three different turbulence modeling. The hydrodynamic behavior of the screening facility, combined with head pond-upstream channel-bar screens was evaluated under different conditions of the mass flow rate and velocity fields. Also, the numerical study was validated against the experimental study, which implemented in-situ measurements by Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV), and consistent results were obtained between the numerical and experimental study. Interestingly, while the Realizable (real) k-ε turbulence model with the relative error of 9.31% gave the best predicting results in the head pond, the renormalization group (RNG) k-ɛ turbulence model with the relative error of 9.05% gave the best predicting results in the upstream channel and through bar screens. As a result of the experimental measurements and CFD analyses carried out in the full-scale WWTP, the function of the screening facility was found to be incomplete. Moreover, a hydraulically improved new geometry was presented to operate the existing WWTP efficiently.