Can Anyone in California Make a Circle? Case Studies from Unique Clarifier Assessments at California WRFs

Many WRFs in California were built with investment following the Clean Water Act of the 1970’s. As such, many of the assets in these WRFs are now reaching the end of their useful life. Faced with aging infrastructure, new regulatory pressures, and increasing loads, these WRFs have had to realize more capacity from the same infrastructure. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling has been an indispensable tool in the evaluation, retrofit/design of clarifiers at numerous facilities in California. In many of these evaluations, careful consideration of the geometry of the clarifier is needed to understand the true capacity of the unit process. This paper will review case studies of unique. applications of CFD 2D and 3D modeling to assess clarifier improvements and design at three WRFs.