Aeration efficiency over stepped cascades: better predictions from flow regimes.

Stepped cascades are recognized as high potential air–water gas exchangers. In natural rivers, these structures enhance oxygen transfer to water by creating turbulence at interface with increasing air entrainment in water and air–water surface exchange. Stepped cascades could be really useful to improve the natural self-purification process by providing oxygen to aerobic micro-organisms. The aeration performance of these structures depends on several operating and geometrical parameters. In the literature, several empirical correlations for aeration efficiency prediction on stepped cascades exist. Most of these correlations are only applicable for operating and geometrical parameters in the range of which they have been developed. In this paper, 398 experimental sets of data (from our experiments and collected from literature) were used to develop a correlation for aeration prediction over stepped cascades derived from dimensional analysis and parameterized for each individual flow regime in order to consider change in flow regime effect on oxygen transfer. This new correlation allowed calculating the whole set of data obtained for cascades with steps heights between 0.05 m and 0.254 m, cascade total height between 0.25 m and 2.5 m, for discharges per unit of width ranging from 0.28 10−3 m2/s to 600 10−3 m2/s and for cascade steps number between 3 and 25. In these ranges of parameters, standard deviation for aeration efficiency estimation was found to be less than 17%. Finally, advices were proposed to help and improve the structure design in order to improve aeration.