Coastal Environmental Hydraulics Fall semester 2013

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Selective withdrawal in a reservoir when multiple outlets exist
1. Introduction
Floods are the natural phenomena that generates major disasters around the world, both in human lives
and economic losses, Berga (2004). Traditionally, civil engineers have tried to mitigate the effects of
flooding by building structural measures such as dams. Moreover, dams have been used to store water in
order to warranty the availability of fresh water.
The development of environmental consciousness has also been acknowledged by policy makers in
different countries. In Europe, for instance, The Water Framework Directive (WFD-EU, 2000) offers a
wider approach to water resources management considering the necessity to evaluate and ensure the water
quality in aquatic ecosystems. Nevertheless, since the quality of aquatic ecosystems depends on the
nutrients, pollutants, dissolved gases and suspended particles it becomes essential to understand the
hydrodynamic processes that transport water and its constituents.
The evaluation of water quality in reservoirs and analyzing the impact that the withdrawal of the reservoir
has on the downstream becomes even more complex. Apart from the above mentioned parameters, the
approaches to understand the hydrodynamics in the reservoir need to take into account the effect of
thermal stratification, the force on the wind on the surface and the kinetic impact of the water that flows
into the lake via the tributaries.
So as to deal with this problem in reservoirs and reduce its complexity, previous research has been
focused on the estimation of the retention time in the reservoir and has been compared to time scales of
biogeochemical processes to calculate mass balances or understand dynamics of chemical properties. This
study shows a review of the different procedures to estimate transport time scales in reservoirs and
describes the methodology used to conduct this analysis by numerical simulations, including a description
of operation techniques to ensure the water quality at the outlet of the reservoir. At the end, an analysis of
the applicability of this procedure to the weirs that have been build in Korea during the 4 Major Rivers
Restoration Project is done.
2. Link between residence time and physical processes in a reservoir
As it was previously said, the evaluation of mean residence time of water in a reservoir is required to
know the rate at which the permanence of substances occur. In order to do these estimation previous
researchers considered the reservoirs to be artificial lakes.
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In spite of the fact that mean residence time becomes the basis for comparative analyses of the aquatic
ecosystem, there are two main first order measures to describe the time of mixing and transport processes
occurring in aquatic systems, expressed as residence time and flushing time.
Flushing time (

) was defined by Geyer et al. (2000) as "the ratio of mass of a scalar in a reservoir to the
rate of renewal of the scalar". In other words,

can be obtained as the volume water in the reservoir (V)

divided by its flow rate (Q).

The calculation of this flushing time assumes that the reservoir is a continuous tank reactor where any
introduction of mass is instantaneously mixed throughout the domain. This magnitude represents the
average amount of time the mass spends in the reservoir, then the only mechanism of transport taken into
account here is mean convective flux.
However, when bringing the problem into a real case major differences appear, since reservoirs are
subject to seasonal variations that on the discharge rate, runoff and water demands. Then, it is not easy to
determine which values of V and Q should be used in Eq. 1.
As a result, a more realistic approach to the water renewal times is needed. In order to provide a more
accurate expression of the residence time it becomes necessary to consider more complex factors such as
stratification of the water body and the effect of the inflows into the reservoir.
One important factor to analyze is the effect of stratification. As Ambrosetti et al (2003) pointed out,
reservoirs are affected by seasonal temperature variations that develop different vertical thermal structures
that might lead to vertical stratification. As a result, when stratification occurs severe constraints to water
movement in the vertical direction are imposed. Consequently, only a percentage of the whole water
volume will be involved in the water renewal. On the other hand, when stratification is broken,
recirculation of the water body might take place and the deep water renewal is possible. For instance,
according to the research carried out by Rueda et al. (2005) in Spanish reservoirs the stratification
becomes less stronger in autumn when the surface of the water starts cooling and the heat absorbed by the
reservoir is smaller than the heat lost by its surface.
Besides, it is also necessary to analyze the effect of inflow coming into the reservoir. The physical and
chemical characteristics of these waters might be different from the one in the reservoir. Then, when these
tributaries enter the reservoir stagnant water in the domain is pushed due to the density differences.
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Depending on the density of the tributary this entrance might take place over the surface of the reservoir
(if the density in the stream is smaller) or it will flow down until they reach a level of equal density.
As a result, the assumption of instantaneous mixing in a reservoir is not adequate and a physically based
approach is needed. The next section presents two similar approaches to determine retention times,
suggested by Rueda et al. (2005), that takes into account the effect of stratification on transport as well
as discharge fluctuations.
3. Numerical estimation of the residence time and the thermal profile in a reservoir
After checking the existing approaches to estimate the mean residence times are based on one-
dimensional assumptions. According to experimental observations, vertical thermal variations of most
reservoirs are higher than those in the horizontal direction. The 1D assumption is based on observations
that the density stratification usually encountered in lakes and reservoirs inhibits vertical motions while
horizontal variations in density are quickly relaxed by horizontal advection and convection.
The representation of the thermal structure of the reservoir is achieved by the discretization of the
reservoir into horizontal layers. Then, the temperature in each layer is computed for each time period and
the thermal profile for the reservoir can be obtained by aggregating the temperature in each layer.
For instance, Rueda et al. (2005) obtained the mean residence times in Sau Reservoir ( a reservoir in
North-East Spain that is inside a cascade of reservoirs situated in Ter River) by simulating several series
of a tracer using DYRESM (Imberger and Patterson, 1981) model. This model allowed to take into
account the effect of mixing and transport processes with the river inflow, diffusion in the hypolimnion
(the dense bottom layer of water if stratification exists) as well as mixed-layer dynamics by computing the
variation of water and salinity with depth and time.
The vertical profile of Sau Reservoir in the 1D framework used in DYRESM is represented as a set of
Lagrangian layers which are free to move vertically (advection), and to contract and expand in response
to inflows, outflows and surface mass fluxes (precipitation and evaporation). The Lagrangian formulation
avoids the need to calculate vertical velocities, greatly decreasing computational time and minimizing
numerical diffusion Hamilton and Schladow (1997). Each layer is homogeneous and property differences
between layers represent the vertical distribution. Mixing is represented by amalgamation of layers.
The variation in temperature in a general layer over time is a function of heat transfer due to inflow,
outflow, internal mixing, vertical advection, and interactions between the air-water interface:
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Where T is the temperature of the later, t is time (days),

is inflow temperature,

the flow rate into the

layer, A the horizontal cross section area, is the thickness of the layer,

is outflow temperature,

the outflow rate, Z is elevation, K is vertical diffusion coefficient,

is the net vertical flow entering or

leaving the layer, is density of water,

is specific heat of water and

is external heat source.

In order to simulate tracer transport experiments, the model was fed with daily meteorological and
hydrologic records. The data set consisted of daily records of meteorological variables (incoming solar
radiation, wind speed, air temperature and relative humidity) collected in situ by a meteorological station
installed on the reservoir shore.
Salinity in small concentrations, so as to avoid alterations of water density considerably, was used in as a
conservative tracer. The tracer simulations consisted in releasing a pulse of a known quantity of tracer in
the river water and monitoring the mass flux of tracer through the outlets for the remaining simulation
time. Once 95% of the mass originally released had left the reservoir, the mean residence time estimate
was ontained.
4. Optimization of the reservoir Discharge Quality through selective withdrawal.
Once the thermal profile in the reservoir is known it becomes possible to optimize the control the quality
of the released water. Selective withdrawal structures are used in reservoir outlets as the main method to
control the quality and maintain the temperature regime of the stream that existed before the construction
of the reservoir.
The models as the one described above become a good mechanism to improved the operation of the
outlets. By knowing the thermal profile it is possible to anticipate future temperature objectives and plan
the operation of selective withdrawal structures. Previous research combined thermal simulation models
with optimization techniques to determine the optimal withdrawal with respect to various water quality
parameters, Kaplan (1974). For each simulation, the thermal profile in the reservoir is evaluated and
depending on the desired temperature target and the total flow that should be released downstream, a
combination of the selective withdrawal outlets is combined so as the water released has a temperature as
closed as possible to the desired temperature.


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5. Applicability to Korean watersheds.
As a final comment I would like to analyze the feasibility of applying this methodology into Korean
Rivers since one of the main Objectives of the 4 Major Rivers Restoration Project was oriented to
improve the water quality in Korean streams. As some of the examples cited here, the construction of
several multi-purpose weir in Nakdong River made the river to become a cascade of artificial lakes.
The most important think should be to analyze whether stratification might take place or not in the river.
Clearly, the construction of the weirs has slowed down the flow, however, if the stratification behaves in a
similar way as it does in European reservoirs; the strongest stratification effects would take place in
summer. The main difference is that during Korean summer the flooding season takes place, then I feel
that stratification could be easily swept out.
Anyway, even stratification took place, the traditional alternatives here described to simulate the thermal
profile in the reservoir might not be valid. The main problem comes out when trying to check the validity
of the 1D assumption. In Sau Reservoir case, the validity of these assumption was checked using a Lake
number criterion. The Lake number L
N
(Imberger and Patterson, 1990) is a parameter defined in terms of
the stability of the stratification and the disturbing influence of the wind, the inflow momentum or the
outflow. If L
N
is greater than one, the restoring force is greater than the disturbing force, and the density
structure will be approximately horizontal. Hence, if L
N
is greater than one the 1D assumption is valid.
Then by performing some experimental surveys in the real field it would be possible to check whether
stratification exists and also verify the applicability of the one-dimensional assumption.
During the whole course I had the feeling that the stratification could play an important role in Nakdong
River after the completion of the 4 Major Rivers Project. However, after reading in detail previous
research I end up with more doubts. As I realized that the complexity of the problem increases in the real
field and considering the low temperatures in Korea, apart from the ones during the rainy season, I find
hard to believe that with the water depths that can be found in Nakdong River (around 15 m) stratification
would take place.

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6. References
Ambrosetti, W., Barbanti, L., Sala, N., 2003. Residence time and physical processes in lakes. Journal of
limnology. 62, 115.
Berga, L., 2006: Dams and Reservoirs, Societies and Environment in the 21st Century. Proceedings of
the International Symposium on Dams. International Commission on Large Dams, 22th Congress.

Fontane, D. G.,Labadie, J. W., 1981: Optimal control of reservoir discharge quality through selective
withdrawal. Water Resources Research. Volume 7. Issue 6. pp. 1594-1602.
Geyer, W.R., Morris, J.T., Pahl, F.G., Jay, D.J., 2000: Interaction between physical processes and
ecosystem structure: A comparative approach. Estuarine Science: A Synthetic Approach to Research
and Practice.
Imberger, J., Patterson, J.C., 1981: A dynamic reservoir simulation model: DYRESM 5. Transport
Models of Inland and Coastal Waters. Academic Press, pp. 310361.

Rueda, F., Moreno-Ostos, E., Armengol, J.. 2006: The residence time of river water in reservoirs,
Ecological Modeling, Volume 191, Issue 2.