testing intuition | water run-off polution
Water Run-off Protection: Oil Seperator at Blaise Diagne Airport
First baffle wall
Second & third baffle walls
First compartment
Inlet
Fourth & fifth baffle walls
Second compartment
Openings between first & second compartments
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Last baffle wall
Third compartment
Outlet
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One of the main pollutants in water runoff is oil containing harmful constituents such as metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The extent by which these materials are polluting storm water run-offs and the ultimate receiving waters is largely unknown but needs mitigating measures to curtail the residues they produce. Oil separators are generally used to remove the oil from water flow in open areas such as airport airfields and runways by setting a percentage of safe remaining oil residue margin below a a predetermined allowable limit. The 3-D numerical model created to determine the optimum dimension and the efficiency of a proposed oil separator for the Dakar, Senegal Blaise Diagne Airport’s airfield and infrastructure determined the optimum three-compartments size removing at least 98% of the oil.
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Oil separator 3-compartments and 6-baffle walls 3-D model
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• Multiphase flow (water, oil and air) • Unsteady turbulent flow • 150 million tetrahedral cells
1 Suggested structure of the oil seperator 2 Percentage of oil inside the oil seperator 3, 4 Velocity vectors of the mixture inside the oil seperator 5 Hydrodynamic water pressure acting on the oil sperator walls
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