UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department

C&EE 200 Section 2 Seminar

Environmental and Water Resources Engineering

CFD for Wastewater Treatment Using Open-source Software

Randal W. Samstag. PE, BCEE

Civil and Sanitary Engineer

Mr. Samstag will speak about his experience and that of colleagues in the International Water Association Working Group for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) using CFD for solution of common problems encountered in design of wastewater treatment facilities. CFD has been used for decades in the aeronautics and automotive design industries, but only in the last decade has it been used at all extensively for analysis of process problems facing wastewater treatment engineers.  Examples from a recent workshop at the Water Environment Federation annual conference in Chicago in 2017 will be presented. This workshop, which was a follow-up on a successful 2015 workshop in Brisbane, Australia, focused on use of the open-source software platform, OpenFOAM.  Mr. Samstag will present a brief introduction to CFD followed by examples of analysis of typical wastewater unit facilities using OpenFOAM, including: a Parshall flume, open channel flow splitter, secondary sedimentation tank, activated sludge mixing tank and an ultraviolet disinfection channel.

Where:   4275 Boelter Hall

When:     11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, Thursday, March 1, 2018

Mr. Samstag has degrees from Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. He is a licensed civil engineer in California and a licensed civil and sanitary engineer in Washington State.  He has nearly forty years of experience in municipal and consulting engineering. His primary expertise is in analysis of the activated sludge process, including process testing and biochemical and CFD modeling of aeration and anoxic tanks and of primary and activated sludge sedimentation tanks. He has also been the primary author of evaluations of nutrient removal for the four largest wastewater treatment facilities discharging to Puget Sound. He is the author of over 60 book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles, papers for national and international conferences, and other presentations.  A more detailed description of his experience and downloads of many of his papers and workshop presentations may be found on his website at https://rsamstag.com/.