Estudio de las condiciones de flujo en un floculador hidráulico horizontal de tabiques mediante modelo numérico

Abstract

For the development of the titling work, it was proposed to carry out a comparative analysis between the results obtained by conventional design methods and design assisted by numerical modeling of a hydraulic flocculator of horizontal flow partitions. It has been proposed to carry out a selected case study, an initial exploratory analysis to apply, evaluate criteria and generate information through the application of conventional methodologies. Likewise, in a complementary way to the defined case study, it was proposed to implement a numerical model that allows contrasting and validating results. Three sets of activities aligned with the specific objectives and scope were planned for the study. The first is the analysis of a conventional design for a horizontal flow wall flocculator, the second is the implementation of a numerical model to study a horizontal flow septum flocculator, and the last one is the comparative study of conventional design methods and numerical modeling. In the titling work, the hydraulic flocculator of horizontal flow partitions located in the Water Plant of the El Descanso Thermoelectric Power Plant, owned by the Empresa Electro Generadora del Austro ELECAUSTRO S.A., was taken as a case study. The conventional design was carried out using the theory related to fluid mechanics from the different authors who have studied it; for the numerical modeling, the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) program was used, which solves the Navier-Stokes flow government equations iteratively. Salome-Meca was used as a computational tool to perform pre-processing, OpenFOAM software for processing, and Paraview for post-processing. The comparative study showed that Computational Fluid Dynamics tools allow a detailed examination of water flow behavior, which for conventional design has more significant uncertainty.