Vertical dense jet in flowing current

Abstract

The discharge of brackish water, as a dense jet in a natural water body, by the osmotic power plants, undergoes complex mixing processes and has significant environmental impacts. This paper focuses on the mixing processes that develop when a dense round jet outfall perpendicularly enters a shallow flowing current. Extensive experimental measurements of both the salinity and the velocity flow fields were conducted to investigate the hydrodynamic jet behavior within the ambient current. Experiments were carried out in a closed circuit flume at the Coastal Engineering Laboratory (LIC) of the Technical University of Bari (Italy). The salinity concentration and velocity fields were analyzed, providing a more thorough knowledge about the main features of the jet behavior within the ambient flow, such as the jet penetration, spreading, dilution, terminal rise height and its impact point with the flume lower boundary. In this study, special attention is given to understand and confirm the conjecture, not yet experimentally demonstrated, of the development and orientation of the jet vortex structures. Results show that the dense jet is almost characterized by two distinct phases: a rapid ascent phase and a gradually descent phase. The measured flow velocity fields definitely confirm the formation of the counter-rotating vortices pair, within the jet cross-section, during both the ascent and descent phases. Nevertheless, the experimental results show that the counter-rotating vortices pair of both phases (ascent and descent) are of opposite rotational direction.