Modeling of Disinfection Contactor Hydraulics under Uncertainty

Abstract

A study has been done to evaluate the predictive capabilities of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of disinfection contactor hydraulics under model input uncertainty. The study consists of modeling the transport of a chemical tracer in a full-scale reactor and predicting the effluent residence time distribution (RTD) curve. An uncertainty analysis using Monte Carlo probabilistic techniques was used to determine the sensitivity of the effluent RTD to uncertainty in the influent turbulent kinetic energy constant, the turbulent Schmidt number, the wall roughness height, the influent turbulent length scale, and the turbulence model selection. Kruskal–Wallis, Friedman, and Spearman Rho statistical tests were used to evaluate changes in