Physical–chemical treatment process optimization for high polluting dairy effluents prior fermentation

Among dairy effluents, bactofugate (B) and decreaming racking water (D) were identified as the most polluting due to their organic load content expressed in the chemical oxygen demand (156–240 g·L^?1). Joining the plant wastewater, such effluents contribute to the increase of the polluting load of the wastewater treatment plant input which disturbs the treatment performance. This work proposes an upstream segregation of those dairy effluents for combined physical–chemical and biological treatment. An experimental design was proposed to investigate initial pH, applied temperature and exposure time factor effects on the thermal coagulation process. The fermentation of the resulted supernatants using Lactobacillus lactis ssp. lactis was performed. The optimized thermal coagulation pretreatment was obtained at (pH; T(°C); t(min)): 6, 60 °C and 5 min, with both (B) and (D) effluents. Resulted clarified whey sugar, protein and fat contents were assessed. The physical–chemical treatment resulted in considerable organic matter removal: 45% for (B) samples and 31% for (D) samples of proteins content and almost the total fat content. However, there is no considerable effect on the sugar content reduction, which remains responsible for the major fraction of the whey residual chemical oxygen demand (COD). Clarified whey fermentation using Lactococcus lactis ssp. lactis strain induced important sugar consumption rates. Therefore, important sugar consumption rates were recorded and the COD removal efficiency was improved. The recorded global COD removal efficiency was of about 93%. The proposed combined physical–chemical and biological processes for dairy effluents pretreatment allowed not only to reduce the effluents polluting load, but also to valorize wheys by producing valuable components.     

Numerical Homogenization of Jointed Rock Masses Using Wave Propagation Simulation

Homogenization in fractured rock analyses is essentially based on the calculation of equivalent elastic parameters. In this paper, a new numerical homogenization method that was programmed by means of a MATLAB code, called HLA-Dissim, is presented. The developed approach simulates a discontinuity network of real rock masses based on the International Society of Rock Mechanics (ISRM) scanline field mapping methodology. Then, it evaluates a series of classic joint parameters to characterize density (RQD, specific length of discontinuities). A pulse wave, characterized by its amplitude, central frequency, and duration, is propagated from a source point to a receiver point of the simulated jointed rock mass using a complex recursive method for evaluating the transmission and reflection coefficient for each simulated discontinuity. The seismic parameters, such as delay, velocity, and attenuation, are then calculated. Finally, the equivalent medium model parameters of the rock mass are computed numerically while taking into account the natural discontinuity distribution. This methodology was applied to 17 bench fronts from six aggregate quarries located in Tunisia, Spain, Austria, and Sweden. It allowed characterizing the rock mass discontinuity network, the resulting seismic performance, and the equivalent medium stiffness. The relationship between the equivalent Young’s modulus and rock discontinuity parameters was also analyzed. For these different bench fronts, the proposed numerical approach was also compared to several empirical formulas, based on RQD and fracture density values, published in previous research studies, showing its usefulness and efficiency in estimating rapidly the Young’s modulus of equivalent medium for wave propagation analysis.     

Assessing groundwater vulnerability to nitrate pollution using statistical approaches: a case study of Sidi Bouzid shallow aquifer,Central Tunisia

The study region comprises the Sidi Bouzid shallow aquifer, which is located in the western part of Central Tunisia. It is mainly occupied by agricultural land with intensive use of chemical fertilizers especially nitrates. For this reason, nitrate measurement was performed in 38 water samples to evaluate and calibrate the obtained models. Several environmental parameters were analyzed using groundwater nitrate concentrations, and different statistical approaches were applied to assess and validate the groundwater vulnerability to nitrate pollution in the Sidi Bouzid shallow aquifer. Multiple linear regression (MLR), analyses of covariance (ANCOVA), and logistic regression (LR) were carried out for studying the nitrate effects on groundwater pollution. Statistical analyses were used to identify major environmental factors that control the groundwater nitrate concentration in this region. Correlation and statistical analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between the nitrate (dependent variable) and various environmental variables (independent variables). All methods show that “groundwater depth” and “land use” parameters are statistically significant at 95% level of confidence. Groundwater vulnerability map was obtained by overlaying these two thematic layers which were obtained in the GIS environment. It shows that the high vulnerability area coincides with the likelihood that nitrate concentration exceeds 24.5 mg/l in groundwater. The relationship between the groundwater vulnerability classes and the nitrate concentrations provides satisfactory results; it showed an Eta-squared correlation coefficient of 64%. So, the groundwater vulnerability map can be used as a synthetic document for realistic management of groundwater quality.     

A multiscale adjoint method to compute sensitivity coefficients for flow in heterogeneous porous media

A multiscale adjoint (MSADJ) method is developed to compute high-resolution sensitivity coefficients for subsurface flow in large-scale heterogeneous geologic formations. In this method, the original fine-scale problem is partitioned into a set of coupled subgrid problems, such that the global adjoint problem can be efficiently solved on a coarse grid. Then, the coarse-scale sensitivities are interpolated to the local fine grid by reconstructing the local variability of the model parameters with the aid of solving embedded adjoint subproblems. The approach employs the multiscale finite-volume (MSFV) formulation to accurately and efficiently solve the highly detailed flow problem. The MSFV method couples a global coarse-scale solution with local fine-scale reconstruction operators, hence yielding model responses that are quite accurate at both scales. The MSADJ method is equally efficient in computing the gradient of the objective function with respect to model parameters. Several examples demonstrate that the approach is accurate and computationally efficient. The accuracy of our multiscale method for inverse problems is twofold: the sensitivity coefficients computed by this approach are more accurate than the traditional finite-difference-based numerical method for computing derivatives, and the calibrated models after history matching honor the available dynamic data on the fine scale. In other words, the multiscale based adjoint scheme can be used to history match fine-scale models quite effectively.     

Fragmentation Energy in Rock Blasting

The theoretical explosive energy used in blasting is a common issue in many recent research works (Spathis 1999; Sanchidrian 2003). It is currently admitted that the theoretical available energy of the explosives is split into several parts during a blast: seismic, kinetic, backbreaks, heave, heat and fragmentation energies. Concerning this last one, the energy devoted to the breakage and to the creation of blocks within the muckpile can be separated from the microcracking energy which is devoted to developing new and/or extending existing micro cracks within the blocks (Hamdi et al. 2001; López et al. 2002). In order to investigate these two types of energy, a first and important task is to precisely study the main parameters characterising the two constitutive elements of the rock mass (rock matrix and discontinuity system). This should provide useful guidelines for the choice of the blasting parameters (type of explosive, blasting pattern, etc.), in order to finally control the comminution process. Within the frame of the EU LESS FINES research project, devoted to the control of fines production, the methodology was developed in order to: (1) characterize the in situ rock mass, by evaluating the density, anisotropy, interconnectivity and fractal dimension of the discontinuity system and (2) evaluate fragmentation (both micro and macro) energy spent during the blasting operation. The methodology was applied to three production blasts performed in the Klinthagen quarry (Sweden) allowing to estimate the part of the fragmentation energy devoted to the formation of muck pile blocks on one side and to the muckpile blocks microcracking on the other side.     

Ordering-based nonlinear solver for fully-implicit simulation of three-phase flow

The Fully Implicit method (FIM) is often the method of choice for the temporal discretization of the partial differential equations governing multiphase flow in porous media. The FIM involves solving large coupled systems of nonlinear algebraic equations. Newton-based methods, which are employed to solve the nonlinear systems, can suffer from convergence problems—this is especially true for large time steps in the presence of highly nonlinear flow physics. To overcome such convergence problems, the time step is usually reduced, and the Newton steps are restarted from the solution of the previous (converged) time step. Recently, potential ordering and the reduced-Newton method were used to solve immiscible three-phase flow in the presence of buoyancy and capillary effects (e.g., Kwok and Tchelepi, J. Comput. Phys. 227(1), 706–727 2007). Here, we improve the robustness of the potential-based ordering method in the presence of gravity. Furthermore, we also extend this nonlinear approach to interphase mass transfer. Our algorithm deals effectively with mass transfer between the liquid and gas phases, including phase disappearance (e.g., gas going back in solution) and reappearance (e.g., gas coming out of solution and forming a separate phase), as a function of pressure and composition. Detailed comparisons of the robustness and efficiency of the potential-based solver with state-of-the-art nonlinear/linear solvers are presented for immiscible two-phase (Dead-Oil), Black-Oil, and compositional problems using heterogeneous models. The results show that for large time steps, our nonlinear ordering-based solver reduces the number of nonlinear iterations significantly, which leads to gains in the overall computational cost.     

Monotone multiscale finite volume method

The MultiScale Finite Volume (MSFV) method is known to produce non-monotone solutions. The causes of the non-monotone solutions are identified and connected to the local flux across the boundaries of primal coarse cells induced by the basis functions. We propose a monotone MSFV (m-MSFV) method based on a local stencil-fix that guarantees monotonicity of the coarse-scale operator, and thus, the resulting approximate fine-scale solution. Detection of non-physical transmissibility coefficients that lead to non-monotone solutions is achieved using local information only and is performed algebraically. For these ‘critical’ primal coarse-grid interfaces, a monotone local flux approximation, specifically, a Two-Point Flux Approximation (TPFA), is employed. Alternatively, a local linear boundary condition can be used for the dual basis functions to reduce the degree of non-monotonicity. The local nature of the two strategies allows for ensuring monotonicity in local sub-regions, where the non-physical transmissibility occurs. For practical applications, an adaptive approach based on normalized positive off-diagonal coarse-scale transmissibility coefficients is developed. Based on the histogram of these normalized coefficients, one can remove the large peaks by applying the proposed modifications only for a small fraction of the primal coarse grids. Though the m-MSFV approach can guarantee monotonicity of the solutions to any desired level, numerical results illustrate that employing the m-MSFV modifications only for a small fraction of the domain can significantly reduce the non-monotonicity of the conservative MSFV solutions.     

Numerical and field study of ship-induced waves along the St. Lawrence Waterway,Canada

Coastal and bank erosion along the St. Lawrence River Waterway in Quebec, Canada, represents a hazard to local communities living along the river banks, as well as to the local fauna habitat. The purpose of this study is to assess the potential impact of the waves generated by long containerships on riverbank erosion and recession at critical sites along the St. Lawrence River Waterway, which have already experienced significant damage. A field study was carried out to investigate the ship-generated hydrodynamics and the various driving mechanisms of the erosion process induced by ship waves. The field measurements provided an assessment of the influence of the length of large vessels by comparing the characteristics of the hydrodynamics fields induced by the passage of two containerships of different lengths. The potential for bank erosion and recession is assessed in terms of the wake erosive energy incident to the shoreline. The field data are compared against analytical results predicted by an empirical model, as well as against a ship-generated hydrodynamics model. Several numerical simulations for quantifying the ship’s drawdown and its effects are also presented.