Distribution basins are used widely in the water treatment process. Uniform distribution at the distribution basin is an important because it affect precipitation efficiency of sedimentation basin. Generally distribution basin has a free surface water and is consisted of a weir. Study result, when inflow of distribution basin is less, amount of overflow is much at the nearest weir from the inlet. But when inflow is much, amount of overflow is much at the far weir from the inlet. The difference of distribution amount at the pipe is affected by the curvature and length of the pipe. The magnitude of the effect is determined by the relative energy loss and the flow state of the distribution basin. Optimization of the response surface method for minimizing an amount of deviation of the distribution is a very useful technique to determine the optimal ratio of the valve opening.
The role of the distribution basin role is to apportion incoming raw water to the primary sedimentation basin as part of the water treatment process. The purpose of this study was to calculate the amount of water in the distribution basin using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis and to find a way to improve any non-uniformity. We used the Taguchi method and the minitab tool as optimization methods. The results of the CFD calculation showed that the distribution flow had a deviation of 5% at the minimum inflow, 10% at the average inflow, and 22% at the maximum inflow. At maximum flow, the appropriate heights of the 7 weirs(C, D, A, B, E, F, G) were 40 mm, 20 mm, 20 mm, 0, 0, 0, and 20 mm, respectively, according to the Taguchi optimization tool. Here, the maximum deviation of the distribution amount was 9% and the standard deviation was 23.7. The appropriate heights of the 7 weirs, according to the Minitab tool, were 40 mm, 20 mm, 20 mm, 0, 0, 0, and 20 mm, respectively, for weirs C, D, A, B, E, F, and G. Therefore, the maximum deviation of the distribution amount was 8% and the standard deviation was 17.1, which was slightly improved compared to the Taguchi method.