Numerical Modeling of Multiple Inclined Dense Jets Discharged from Moderately Spaced Ports

Abstract

Wastewaters are often discharged into water bodies from multiport diffusers in the form of inclined dense jets, and it is important to predict their mixing characteristics for a sound sustainable design for seawater desalination. Compared with single jets and multiple horizontal or vertical jets, the mixing processes of multiple inclined dense jets are more complicated, and thus the existing theoretical, analytical, or simplified numerical methods cannot effectively predict their dilution properties. Recent advances in numerical modeling techniques have provided a new avenue of simulating wastewater jets as three-dimensional phenomena, but their application to multiple inclined dense jets has rarely been reported. In this study, a fully three-dimensional numerical model is employed to simulate multiple inclined brine discharges from diffusers with moderately spaced ports, with the standard and re-normalization group (RNG) k-ε turbulence closures being tested. The simulated characteristic variables are compared to experimental data, and the results show that the simulations match very well with the experiments, demonstrating that the numerical model is a promising tool for simulating inclined dense jets discharged from multiport diffusers. The study also found that the RNG k-ε model performs better than the standard k-ε model without significantly increasing the computational costs.