Calibración de modelos matemáticos de calidad de agua para valorar el impacto de estrategias de saneamiento del río Almendares

Abstract

The river Almendares is the main watercourse crossing the city of Havana. Its indiscriminate use as natural sink for contaminated
waters has changed drastically its appearance. The bad smell and the fauna death are their normal conditions nowadays. At the 14.45 km from the mouth, the waste water treatment plant María del Carmen discharges in the Almendares. Wastes from the industries and communities of the municipality Boyeros arrive at this plant. Down stream the creeks Paila, Marinero, Santoyo y Mordazo tribute to the river with and additional load. The water quality models are very useful tools to plan sanitary strategies
for the handling of the contamination, mainly, to predict its effectiveness to improve the quality until the required levels. In the present
work the steady state, one dimensional Streeter and Phelps model was calibrated and validated to simulate the effect of multiple-point and distributed sources on the carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand, the dissolved oxygen and the ammonium concentration in the river, considering that the dispersion is neglected in comparison to the advection. The model considers the effect of sediment oxygen demand, photosynthesis and respiration of the acuatic plants.