Use of dye tracers to determine transport and dispersion parameters in Piabanha River (RJ) for its quali-quantitative modeling with HEC-RAS

ABSTRACT

A field study was carried out on a reach of approximately 70 km of Piabanha river, located between Petrópolis and Areal, in the highlands of Rio de Janeiro State to estimate the transport and dispersion characteristics of contaminants using dye tracers techniques. The results of field campaigns, conducted in the fall of 2012, allowed to determine the values of transit time, flow rate, mean flow velocity and longitudinal dispersion coefficient. The flow rate and mean velocity obtained in situ with dye tracers were used to calibrate the one-dimensional hydrodynamic model Hydrologic Engineering Center’s River Analysis System (HEC-RAS). Whereas hydraulic parameters obtained by classical methods for rivers with very irregular geometry such as Piabanha river are not suitable for representing the average characteristics of a river stretch, the results obtained with tracers represented a good alternative to obtain parameters used in hydrodynamic models. The results obtained by the HEC-RAS are in excellent agreement with those obtained by the experiments with fluorescent tracers.

Keywords:
fluorescent tracers in hydrology; transport and dispersion of pollutants; hydrodynamic and transport modeling