Abstract
When water is drawn from a cooling pond, heated by
some industrial process and discharged "back into the pond to
dissipate its heat load to the atmosphere an orderly motion is
generated within the pond. This motion and the subsequent heat
transfer from the surface of the pond is governed by the inlet
Densimetric Proude Number, the inlet Reynolds Number, and the
rate of heat transfer from the surface.
In this dissertation, a two-dimensional cooling pond
has been studied. The heated water is discharged onto the
surface of the pond and, after losing heat at the surface, is
eventually withdrawn from the bottom of the pond. The laminar
equations of motion and the boundary conditions describing the
problem have been approximated using finite differences and the
equations have been solved using a numerical technique. The
results of this mathematical model have been compared with the
results of a laboratory-scale experimental investigation of the
problem. The experimental results have also been compared with
those obtained from a modified form of the mathematical model
proposed by Koh and Fan for surface buoyant jets.
Under steady state conditions the flow consists of a
surface layer entraining fluid from below and losing heat at the
surface. This layer subsides at the downstream boundary of the
pond and passes through the pond outlet. A recirculation eddy is
formed under the surface flow to replenish fluid entrained
into the surface layer.