• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.219-231
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• 2004

The use of air diffuser system to ameliorate the reservoir by breaking stratification is now widespread. This study focuses on the hydrodynamic behavior of bubble plumes, which is the major mechanism of destratification and their combined effect of adjacent plumes on destratification efficiency. By introducing 2-phase Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD) technique, we could suggest the optimal diffuser spacing having optimal destratification efficiency by simply analyzing the complex destratification procedures varying with the seasonal stratification intensity and bubble flow rate. Lab experiments were also carried out to verify CFD model in thermally stratified fresh water which quite differs from former researches using salts. This study showed that the mixing efficiency strongly depends on the spacing of neighboring plumes. When diffuser spacing is lower than 1.5 times the depth, the combined effect is stronger; as Plume Number(PN) is increased, the efficiency is strongly affected by spacing. If the distance is shorter than the depth of water, the efficiency increases linearly in proportion to PN. Otherwise, the efficiency increases non-linearly. These findings suggest that the combined effect should be more quantitatively taken into consideration for design and operation of air-diffuser destratification system, and recommend that the optimal destratification efficiency will be when plume number is 1000 and the spacing between neighboring diffusers is 1.5 times the depth.