Oxygen Regime Control in Water Body Amelioration

Abstract

An important aspect of water body amelioration is the control of the oxygen regime in water mass. Pollution of water bodies deteriorates their oxygen regime, and the natural inflow of oxygen through the free surface is not enough to compensate for oxygen consumption for pollutant oxidation. Water pollution by various substances causes damage resulting from a decrease in the ecological safety of urban water bodies. Data of World Health Organization (WHO) show that the contact of the population with polluted water bodies causes spreading of deceases, such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and poliomyelitis, and creates considerable health risks. In this context, the artificial aeration of water mass with the use of aeration systems, which improve water quality, is gaining in importance. Most widespread among such aeration systems are diffused-air aerators, in which air supplied by a compressor passes through perforated diffuser plates. The size of the perforation is often chosen with no appropriate hydraulic substantiation. The size of the resulting air bubbles, no doubt, depends on the size of perforation holes; however, the available design relationships give contradictory results depending on the immersion depth of the diffuser plate and the working pressure, which determines air discharge velocity from diffuser plate perforations. This shows that the studies along this line are of scientific and practical importance. This article presents the analysis of the existing relationships for determining the size of air bubbles that form when air is pumped into water through nozzles of different diameters at different pumping rates; the analysis has shown the results of such calculations to differ considerably. Buckingham π-theorem was used to construct dimensionless groups, determining the relationship between the size of bubbles and the factors that govern the outflow of air into water. Dimensionless groups were used to obtain a formula for calculating the size of air bubbles at the aeration of water mass.