Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of Benzene Propagation in Water Pipe

Modeling of water quality in distribution systems becomes nowadays a very popular tool applied in the processes of systems design and operation. Usually, according to everyday practice and literature reports, the chlorine propagation is one of the most frequently reported subjects of modeling. Meanwhile, literature presents many examples of pollutants originated in polymer pipes’ material seriously deteriorating the quality of water in distribution systems. In this case, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) may be applied to numerical calculations of simultaneous transport of several organic and non-organic pollutants in drinking water supply systems constructed of metal or polymer pipes. This paper contains the presentation of recognized pollutants migrating to drinking water from plastic pipes, possibilities of CFD application to water quality modeling and basic set of necessary input data as well as range of simulation results. The numerical calculations for dynamic benzene propagation inside the close loop pipe model was performed by Fluent, Ansys. Inc. for the three selected values of velocity flow. Our modeling attempt was performed as the preliminary step in the assessment of dynamic migration of pollutants originated from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe and the input data and initial and boundary conditions were based on the available literature reports.