A variação das caracteristicas hidráulicas em condutos forçados devido à infestação do Limnoperma fortunei

Abstract

The recent introduction of the mollusk Limnoperna fortunei in the south Americans watersheds, probably brought from the Asiatic southern by the blast water of the ships, has caused environmental impacts and promoted economical losses, it is already realized in Brazil in water capture, pipe systems and hydropower plants. Colonizing the hydraulicsystems, L. fortunei grows in layers, obstructing the pipelines, causing efficiency losses and pipe systems stoppage for cleaning. The pressurized pipeline design considers head losses caused by internal roughness in the pipeline, frequently using available charts and tables in the literature. However, the operational conditions of the pipes infested by the L. fortunei are unknown, so that the adoption of values and coefficients to estimate the head loss can drive to mistaken results ifcompared to the reality. The present work shows an evaluation about the L. fortunei infestation effect in the pipelines concerning the friction factor and the increase of the head losses. Due to the fact that thisproblem is relatively recent in Brazil, theres few information about this subject currently in the country. Moreover, the bibliography presents results obtained in countries under different conditions of the existing ones in Brazil. The obtained results indicate that the presence of this mollusk in the pressurized pipelines systems, in smaller rates than those already observed in Brazilians watersheds, may take thesystem to the collapse by the total hydraulic efficiency loss.