Submarine Outfall Design Methodology for Argentinean Coasts

PATALANO A; M CORRAL; A RODRIGUEZ; GARCIA M; T. BLENINGER

Mar del Plata

Simposio; International Symposium on Outfall Systems, May 15-18, 2011, Mar del Plata, Argentina; 2011

IAHR

The purpose of the following is to introduce why it is important and how we propose toimprove the conditions of treatment and effluents discharge (urban / industrial / rain) on theArgentinean coasts. It is well known that those directly affect the quality of coastal waters and mayhave a considerable impact on human health (swimming area) or the environmental quality ofcoastal ecosystems (such as right whales in the bay of Puerto Madryn). The best ecologicaland economic way to reduce the harmful effects of wastewater discharged near the coast isa well designed combination of submarine outfalls with diffusers. It has been used and discussedall over the world for decades.Today Argentina is still falling behind other countries in SouthAmerica such Brazil, Chile or Venezuela that sum together more than one hundred submarineoutfalls.The design of each submarine outfall is a unique case. It is characterized by the size of the city thatoperates it, the environment (waves, tides, currents, wind), the geometry and the nature of theseabed, the fragility of ecosystems that surround it and the budget. It is in fact important to designeach submarine outfall to its application. Thus what we concretely propose here is to improve theknowledge on the capacity of different outfall diffusers and in different environments bymeasuring the mixing and the initial dilution that it causes. In order to control each variableparameter and to facilitate measurements the work will be part of a laboratory investigation. Wewill present a methodology based on reliable past studies and specially designed for theLaboratorio de Hidráulica of the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba with its 23m open waterchannel, its modern instruments (ADV, laser Nd:Yag for PID and LIF techniques) and the knownnumerical models such as Cormix and Delft3D.To conclude the following presents a method to meliorate the knowledge on submarine outfallsdiffusers capacities in different environments and thus improve the quality of Argentinean coastalwaters.