Performance evaluation and a sizing method for hydrodynamic separators treating urban stormwater runoff

This study reports on 6 years of performance monitoring of stormwater hydrodynamic separators in Korean urban catchments. One hundred and thirty-seven storm events were monitored in four hydrodynamic separators of two different types from 2006 to 2012. Mean values of the event average removal efficiencies of total suspended solids (TSS) for the four hydrodynamic separators were 43.69, 8.54, 42.84, and 14.35% with corresponding mean values of the event average surface overflow rates of 28.62, 40.07, 16.02, and 38.81 m/h, respectively. The low TSS removal efficiency was due to the high instantaneous surface overflow rates frequently occurring throughout a storm event and the abundance of fine particle fractions in the inflow (median particle diameter <75 mu m). The Weibull function was used to simulate particle size distribution (PSD) in the runoff and the simulated PSD functions were further applied to the discrete settling theory to develop curves of TSS removal efficiency, as a function of surface overflow rate and median particle size of the inflow. The developed curves should be useful in determining the design peak flow rate and the size of a hydrodynamic separator for a stated goal of TSS removal efficiency.