One-Dimensional Modeling of Transport of Coal Ash in a River-Reservoir System

Mustafa S Altinakar,Xiaobo Chao,Nuttita Pophet,Reza Marsooli

doi:10.1051/e3sconf/20184004026

Mustafa S Altinakar, Xiaobo Chao + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/20184004026

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Abstract

The present study discusses one-dimensional modeling of the coal ash spill into the Dan River in February 2, 2014, using CCHE1D model. The simulations involved unsteady flow hydrodynamics, unsteady non-equilibrium transport of bed material and coal ash in multiple size classes. Discharges of coal ash transport and percentages of coal ash deposited in the mixing layer are presented. The paper presents the investigation of the sensitivity of model results to the rise time and fall time of the triangular hydrographs of pond water and coal ash discharges into the Dan River, the number of size classes used for modeling bed material and coal ash, the mixing layer thicknesses and the nonequilibrium adaptation length.

Highlights

The coal-ash spill incident studied in the present paper occurred on February 2, 2014, at the retired Dan River Steam Station about 6 km downstream of Eden, North Carolina
The present paper considers only the first 37.64 mile-long (314 cross sections) reach extending from the USGS Wentworth gage to Schoolfield Dam
The water discharge hydrograph measured at the stream gage Smith River at Eden (USGS 02074000) was imposed as lateral inflow at rivermile 10.99, which is located at the confluence with the Dan River

Summary

Introduction

The coal-ash spill incident studied in the present paper occurred on February 2, 2014, at the retired Dan River Steam Station about 6 km downstream of Eden, North Carolina. Based on the grain-size distribution curves measured by the USACE-ERDC, the bed material and coal ash were each represented by 9 size classes in the CCHE1D model as shown in Table 1 [2]. The release hydrographs were imposed as a lateral discharge at node 120, which corresponds to the spill location at the rivermile miles ( km) downstream from the upstream boundary at USGS Wentworth gage. In these simulations, the mixing layer thickness was specified as m, and the adaptation length was set to m

Brief description of CCHE1D model

Coal-ash transport simulated with CCHE1D

Sensitivity to the fall time of the release hydrograph

Findings

Conclusions