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The dependence of shoreline contaminant levels upon the siting of an effluent outfall

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2006

Ronald Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Silver St, Cambridge CBS 9EW

Abstract

It is shown that the advection–diffusion equation for contaminant dispersion in water of variable depth admits of an inverse approach in which the stochastic mean concentration at a fixed sensitive location is calculated for arbitrary discharge sites. A ray method is used to obtain simple approximate solutions for the inverse problem when the sensitive location is situated at the shoreline. This makes explicit the considerable improvements in shoreline pollution levels which can be gained by siting effluent outfalls further away from the shore.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1983 Cambridge University Press

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