Reusing stormwater is a sustainable approach that a lot of cities around the world, including cities in Canada, are developing to improve local and regional water resources. For this purpose, water is typically withdrawn from stormwater ponds (large urban infrastructure that retain stormwater) and used for applications that require less than pristine water quality. However, the large size of these ponds along with the heterogeneity in water quality internally, make the withdrawal location from these ponds for reusable stormwater critically important. Also due to the large sizes of these ponds, collecting data throughout the pond to determine the optimal location for withdrawal is not practical. Modelling however, can provide a more practical means of studying contaminant distribution within the pond over time in order to identify the withdrawal location, among other valuable information. In this dissertation, a modelling approach was developed that simulates fate and transport of bacteria in stormwater ponds after rainstorm events. The model was run to simulate bacteria in the Inverness stormwater pond, which is a large T-shaped pond located in southeast of the City of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The model has two components: a hydrological component and a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) component. The hydrological component calculates the stormwater runoff of the subbasins of the catchment draining into the pond. The results were compared with collected data and good agreement was observed. Then, the results were fed to the CFD component as input in order to simulate the distribution of contamination brought in by the local hydrology.
The CFD component simulates the hydrodynamics of the pond 3-dimensionally. The model was run based on collected data from the pond and multiple versions of the model were developed with regard to free-surface and particulate-attached bacteria transport. In order to address a common issue with hydro-environmental models – being difficult to validate - the model was validated in two ways. First, an instrument was designed and built to measure fluid flow velocity magnitude and direction in the pond. Once calibrated, it was deployed to the pond and the flow field was measured at multiple locations for validation purposes. Second, a non-dimensional number was introduced allowing a comparison between the bacteria concentration data from collected data and that of modelling result in multiple locations of the pond. In both of the validations, good agreement with collected data was observed.
A volume of Fluid model and sediment transport model were integrated into the model, which allowed consideration of free-surface effects and for modeling wider range of bacteria, respectively. The model was used to identify the optimal location for water withdrawal for reuse. The middle of the pond, where the three wings join and near the surface, was located as the optimal location due to the lowest bacteria concentration.
In an attempt to improve the water quality in the optimal location, strategic tree planting on the north bank of the West wing was studied. It was shown that the trees can reduce the transport of bacteria from the most contaminated location to the withdrawal location. The model was also used to study the impact of some of the important assumptions and environmental factors, such as rain and wind, on bacteria distribution. Wind was found to play a crucial role in the bacteria distribution in the pond. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/13487 |
| Date | 08 November 2021 |
| Creators | Allafchi, Farzam |
| Contributors | Valeo, C. (Caterina) |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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