There is significant worldwide environmental concern related to the transportation of Invasive Aquatic Species (IAS) by ships ballast water into non-native environments. This has given rise to the development of a vast array of technological ballast water treatment systems. The complex environmental challenges and tight operational characteristics of marine vessels limits the scope of the technologies used for Ballast Water Treatment (BWT). As a result few technologies have progressed beyond the research and development stage; however one of the most promising technologies for ship board use is the cyclonic separator, or hydrocyclone. Despite the use of hydrocyclones in a wide variety of engineering applications they have yet to be successfully adapted towards the removal of suspended sediment and marine organisms from large volumes of ballast water. The following primary objectives of this study have been met: • Via critical review identify the technological solutions for treating ballast water best suited to onboard use. • Define the critical flow regimes evident within hydrocyclonic separators. • Establish a series of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, evaluating standard turbulence models in order to determine the capacity for commercial CFD to model hydrocyclonic flow. This study has detailed the operational characteristics of ballast water hydrocyclones with the aim of enabling hydrocyclones to be optimised for individual ship configurations. Flow simulations have been conducted using CFD, and in particular the Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) turbulence model. Finally the DES model is shown to be a legitimate turbulence model for hydrocyclonic flow regimes, validated against empirical and experimental data.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:628877 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | McCluskey, D. K. |
| Publisher | Coventry University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/cf872aaa-ff59-d20c-fbdb-75f55773e213/1 |
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