Settling Efficiency of Urban Particulate Matter Transported by Stormwater Runoff

Water Environ Res. 2015 Sep;87(9):783-8. doi: 10.2175/106143015X14212658613839.

Abstract

The main purpose of control measures in urban areas is to retain particulate matter washed out by stormwater over impermeable surfaces. In stormwater control measures, particulate matter removal typically occurs via sedimentation. Settling column tests were performed to examine the settling efficiency of such units using monodisperse and heterodisperse particulate matter (for which the particle size distributions were measured and modelled by the cumulative gamma distribution). To investigate the dependence of settling efficiency from the particulate matter, a variant of the evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR), a Microsoft Excel function based on multi-objective EPR technique (EPR-MOGA), called EPR MOGA XL, was used as a data-mining strategy. The results from this study have shown that settling efficiency is a function of the initial total suspended solids (TSS) concentration and of the median diameter (d50 index), obtained from the particle size distributions (PSDs) of the samples.

MeSH terms

  • Environmental Monitoring
  • Italy
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Particle Size
  • Particulate Matter / analysis*
  • Rain*
  • Water Movements*
  • Water Pollutants, Chemical / analysis*
  • Water Quality

Substances

  • Particulate Matter
  • Water Pollutants, Chemical