Numerical Simulation Of Thermal Discharge From Power Plant

The problem of waste heat discharge into natural bodies of water is one of the environmental problems that has received considerable attention in recent years, which also is an major research content for the environment scholar. A 2-D numerical model, which using the finite element methods, is established in order to evaluate how the thermal discharge affects the water body. The main conclusions include as follows:1. The advances in the research of thermal discharge are reviewed overall. The necessary and feasibility of the application of mathematical models in the research of thermal discharge into water body are pointed out.2. A simple grid generation method is applied to gain the finite element network, and least square method was adopted for the elevation interpolation.3. A 2-Dimension mathematical model is established on unstructured triangular grids, and used to simulate hydrodynamic field.4. A mathematical model is estiblished to simulate the temperature transport and diffusion after the hydrodynamic computation. A finite nodes method based on quadratic triangular elements is adopted.5. As an application case, the model is applied to the cooling water project of Hua'neng Power Plant. The computation is conducted at situations of spring tide and neap tide. An analysis is made according to the computation results.6. Compared the computation results to the real mesured data of the first-stage project of plant, the verification of flow velocities, water depths and temperature rises is complished. As refer to the second-stage project, numerical prediction about temperature influence area and intake temperature rise of thermal effluent was made. The results of verification are merged well and the conclusions of the prediction provide the scientifical references for project design of power station and environmental assessment.