Cooling Water Intakes
Environmental regulations such as the 316(b) rule of the Clean Water Act and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act have increased scrutiny of facilities with water intake systems and their impact on aquatic life. Such facilities now need to evaluate the performance of their intake systems to ensure they are meeting regulatory requirements.
Key to analyzing intake systems is determining the hydraulic zone of influence (HZI) of the system. HZI is the portion of the source water body hydraulically affected by the water intake structure.
Determining the HZI can involve an extensive process of physical or virtual flow modeling of an intake system. FLUENT® computational fluid dynamics software for virtual flow modeling is a fast, economical, and accurate tool for HZI analysis. Once the HZI is determined, knowledge of the aquatic life within it will provide a quantified larval entrainment estimate.
Cook Legacy Coating Company, a water intake and biofouling solution provider, uses FLUENT software together with its experience and data library to quickly and economically create a digital model that will determine the HZI of a water intake system. Project results are delivered in a clear format that can easily be shared between project teams. The model is provided so that further analysis can be performed by our team, the customer, or a third party consultant.
