This thesis studied the viability of recycling filter substrates as soil amendments after being used in on-site systems for phosphorus (P) removal from wastewater. Focus was put on the materials Filtra P and Polonite, which are commercial products used in compact filters in Sweden. A prerequisite for this choice was to review filter materials and P sorption capacity. The filter substrates (Filtra P, Polonite and wollastonite tailings) were recycled from laboratory infiltration columns as soil amendments to a neutral agricultural soil and to an acid meadow soil to study their impacts on soil properties and yield of barley and ryegrass. The amendments tended to improve the yield and showed a liming effect, significantly increasing soil pH and the availability of P. In another experiment, samples of Filtra P and Polonite were equilibrated in batch experiments with the two soils in order to study the P dynamics in the soil-substrate system.  Batch equilibrations confirmed the liming potential of Filtra P and Polonite and showed that improved P availability in soils was strongly dependent on substrate P concentration, phase of sorbed P, and soil type. Finally, samples of Polonite used for household wastewater treatment were recycled as soil amendments to a mountain meadow and to an agricultural field for wheat cropping. The liming effect of Polonite was confirmed under field conditions and the results were similar to those of lime for the mountain meadow soil. However, the results were quite different for the agricultural field, where Polonite did not affect soil pH or any other chemical and physical soil properties investigated and had no impact on wheat yield and quality. The results from field experiments suggested that Polonite can be safely recycled to meadows and cropping fields at rates of 5-10 ton ha-1 but long-term studies are needed to forecast the effects of accumulation. / QC 20100708

Flow induced self-oscillations cause acoustic pressure oscillations of large amplitude in pipe flows. If Reynolds number is treated as a parameter, these floinduced oscillations occur only at discrete and critical values of Reynolds number. However, for a small range of Reynolds numbers around such a critical value, such periodic oscillations may appear intermittently. If intermittency, which is a precursor to these self-oscillations, can be detected, prediction of an impending instability may be possible. In experiments done by Vineeth and Sujith (Int. J. Aeroacoustics, 2016) on flow in a duct orifice arrangement, where flow enters through the duct inlet, and leaves into the atmosphere through the orifice exit, “whistling” was observed at a Reynolds number of 4200 (based on the orifice thickness and flow speed within the orifice), where large amplitude pressure oscillations were observed. At slightly lower Reynolds numbers, bursts of relatively smaller amplitudes of pressure oscillations were observed to appear intermittently. For a similar configuration, Large Eddy Simulations (LES) have been carried out with explicit filtering as a sub­ grid scale model here. Both whistling and intermittency are observed in the simulations. As air flows from the duct into the orifice, it turns sharply around the corner at the duct­ orifice interface. Due to this sharp turn, flow separation occurs, and hence, a shear layer is formed at the mouth of the orifice. The mechanism of whistling is found to be this shear layer within the orifice flapping about and hitting the trailing edge of the orifice periodically, thus causing the shear layer to break and roll up into a vortex. At Reynolds numbers where intermittency is observed, the shear layer is found to very mildly come in contact with the edges of the orifice walls, thus disturbing it. In the simulations, time series data of pressure are recorded at various probe locations. In a given time series, if scale invariance behaviour exists, it can be quantified by measuring the Hurst exponent. The numerical value of the Hurst exponent is an index of “long range or short range dependence” in a time series. Hurst exponent is measured in the time series data obtained. It is found to drop to zero as the flow approaches the state of a self-sustained oscillation, since the growth rates of all the long term as well as short term trends in the time series vanish. A loss of multifractality in the time series is also observed as the flow approaches whistling. As a part of the this thesis, new, split high resolution schemes of high order are designed following the Hixon Turmel Proposal.