Many industrial processes require disposing of heat energy that cannot be used productively, which leads to cooling water discharges to the sea, rivers or reservoirs. Some processes, like desalination, originate flows with a substantially different composition from that of the receiving waters. Others, like the regasification of liquid gas, generate effluents that are cooler than the receiving waters. All those situations require studying the mixing and dispersion of the effluent in the receiving water body to quantify its environmental impact. And the same occurs with cooling water discharges from nuclear and conventional thermal plants operating an open circuit.
Principia has carried out this type of studies in all of the cases mentioned above. The calculations tend to be parametric to incorporate the intrinsically variable nature of many of the relevant factors, particularly those of meteorological and oceanographic character.
