Water & Ecology
Assessment of Contaminant Dispersion in Aquatic Environments
Trinity Consultants' Minnow Aquatic Environmental Services team has the expertise to conduct in-depth aquatic impact assessment of effluent discharges from industrial and municipal facilities such as mining operations, pulp and paper mills, wastewater treatment plants, and power plants.
Assessment of Containment Dispersion in Aquatic Environments
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How We Can Help
Our related capabilities include:
- Mixing zone analysis and modeling (e.g., CORMIXTM, Visual Plumes) - To help understand the dilution of discharged effluent in the immediate mixing zone and provide recommendations to obtain maximum dilution using state-of-the-art mixing zone models. After determining effluent concentration at the edge of the mixing zone, hydrodynamic and water quality models can be used to analyze effluent behavior in the far-field.
- Effluent and thermal plume delineation (dye tracing study and modeling)
- Assimilative capacity determination and TMDL (total maximum daily load) development - Under Section 303 (d) of the U.S. Clean Water Act, we can help understand the capacity of a waterbody to accept and dissipate pollutants without adverse effect, and, using the USEPA TMDL Modelling Toolbox, determine the maximum amount of a pollutant that it can receive while still meeting a water quality standard
Hydrodynamic Characterization and Water Quality Modeling
Hydrodynamic characterization is the study of physical characteristics (e.g., currents, circulation, and stratification) in waterbodies. When combined with water quality modeling, it provides spatial and temporal distributions of physical, chemical, and biological water quality parameters.
We have the capability to conduct hydrodynamic characterization and water quality modeling studies of streams, rivers, reservoirs, lakes, and coastal waters. Modeling results are validated with field data acquired by deploying state-of-the-art sensors such as flow meters, acoustic Doppler profilers, CTDs, drogues, thermistors, and YSI data loggers. Our related capabilities include:
- Flow monitoring and water circulation pattern characterization - Characterizes the hydrodynamic condition of a waterbody by field-deployment of suitable instruments, such as measuring the flow rate of a creek/ river using a flowmeter, or the spatially variable current and circulation pattern of a lake using an ADCP (Figure 1) and GPS-enabled drogues
- Chemical and thermal stratification analysis - Analyzes the chemical and thermal stratification from long-term deployment of thermistors or conductivity meters. Uploaded data may, for example, characterize the long-term thermal stratification pattern of a small lake (Figure 2).