Ramos P, Cunha S R, Neves M V, Pereira F L, Quintaneiro I
Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto, Rua Padre Costa, S. Mamede Infesta, Portugal.
Water Sci Technol. 2005;52(12):283-90.
This work represents one of the first successful applications of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) for interdisciplinary coastal research. A monitoring mission to study the shape and estimate the initial dilution of the S. Jacinto sewage outfall plume using an AUV was performed on July 2002. An efficient sampling strategy enabling greater improvements in spatial and temporal range of detection demonstrated that the sewage effluent plume can be clearly traced using naturally occurring tracers in the wastewater. The outfall plume was found at the surface highly influenced by the weak stratification and low currents. Dilution varying with distance downstream was estimated from the plume rise over the outfall diffuser until a nearly constant value of 130:1, 60 m from the diffuser, indicating the near field end. Our results demonstrate that AUVs can provide high-quality measurements of physical properties of effluent plumes in a very effective manner and valuable considerations about the initial mixing processes under real oceanic conditions can be further investigated.
这项工作代表了自主水下航行器（AUV）首次成功应用于跨学科海岸研究。2002年7月，使用AUV执行了一项监测任务，以研究圣哈辛托污水排放口羽流的形状并估计其初始稀释度。一种有效的采样策略在空间和时间检测范围上实现了更大的改进，结果表明，利用废水中天然存在的示踪剂可以清晰地追踪污水排放羽流。发现排放口羽流在水面处受弱分层和低水流的影响很大。从排放口扩散器上方的羽流上升情况估算出随下游距离变化的稀释度，直到距扩散器60米处达到接近恒定的130:1的值，这表明了近场末端。我们的结果表明，AUV能够以非常有效的方式提供污水羽流物理特性的高质量测量结果，并且可以进一步研究真实海洋条件下初始混合过程的重要因素。
