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Hydrological Sciences Journal: To Cite This Article: E. H. MOREL & A. B. BIRTLES (1983) Optimization of Groundwater
Hydrological Sciences Journal: To Cite This Article: E. H. MOREL & A. B. BIRTLES (1983) Optimization of Groundwater
Hydrological Sciences Journal: To Cite This Article: E. H. MOREL & A. B. BIRTLES (1983) Optimization of Groundwater
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Optimization of groundwater
abstraction from a coastal aquifer
a b
E. H. MOREL & A. B. BIRTLES
a
Institute of Hydrology , Wallingford , Oxfordshire , OX10 8BB ,
UK
b
Central Water Planning Unit , Reading , Berkshire , RG1 8PS ,
UK
Published online: 24 Dec 2009.
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Hydrological Sciences -••• Journal — des Sciences Hydrologiques, 28, 1, 3/1983
E.H. MOREL*
Institute of Hydrology, Wallingford,
Oxfordshire OXlO 8BB, UK
A.B. BIRTLES
Formerly at: Central Water Planning Unit,
Reading, Berkshire RG1 8PS, UK
INTRODUCTION
Economic resources for water supply development are often limited
in developing countries. The optimum choice of groundwater
pumping regimes depends not only on the hydrogeological restrict-
ions on drawdown and water quality, but also on the cost of
providing the water at the demand centre. This means that the
best development scheme in arid areas is not necessarily the one
which maximizes the safe yield of the aquifer.
The present study aims to identify possible locations for new
wellfields which would minimize the cost of water supplied to a
large city located on an unconfined coastal aquifer. Demand for
water is expected to grow very rapidly in the next 15 years, and
far exceed the capacity of the small existing wellfield. The new
wellfields will be required to meet the extremely rapid growth in
demand for water in the city, and in this study potential wellfield
locations have been optimized for steady state abstractions of at
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. array of wells
roh
— o ...
Specified
Sea
h-0
fp s _ p f Kb 2 ]
A= 2 (1)
h ^ QTJ
where A is the length of the wedge; Qf is the freshwater flow per
unit length of interface; b is the saturated aquifer thickness and
K .is the permeability; p s and pf are the densities of saline and
fresh water respectively.
This simple description is justified because there is a lack of
detailed field information in the study area which would be
necessary to calibrate more sophisticated models of the saline
front. The maximum acceptable intrusion of the saline wedge has
been assumed to be 5 km and this figure yields a value of 1.75 m
for the minimum allowable fresh water head at the toe of the
wedge. Management schemes which would lead to lower heads have
been rejected because they would probably cause excessive sea water
intrusion into the aquifer.
The river is not actually in direct hydraulic contact with the
main groundwater body in the aquifer. Water leaks through the
river bed and seeps downwards through unsaturated aquifer before
reaching the water table. The quality of the groundwater deter-
172 E.H. Morel & A . B . Birtles
T V2 h (2)
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TN V (3)
h(x) - x
T 12
where QJJ^ is the infiltration/unit length along the river. The
model shown in Fig.l may be simplified by drawing axes of symmetry
parallel to the x-axis through each wellfield, and halfway between
wellfields. The basic element of the groundwater model is then as
shown in Fig.2.
Full abstraction from each wellfield is Q 0 . Therefore abstract-
ion from the area shown in Fig.2 is Q 0 /2. If we abstract a prop-
ortion f of the input from the river distributed equally between
n wellfields, then
Coast
h=0
bz T
half abstraction image
from each wellfield wellfield
y=o
Q0 = 2u f Q I N (4)
(ps - p f ) Tb
(5)
2 " ~~ "
Pf (1 - f)QiN
X = s + i ijJ (6)
2 2
' sn (w.k) - sn (w-, ,k) )
log,
°
2 ITT » csn (w,k)
- - sn^Cwg.k)
- (7)
v u
P = K = K- <9>
and
Similarly
w
2 = Z
2//P and w
l = Z
i/P (I1)
where
and Zo = x 2 (12)
K and K' are the quarter periods of sn(w,k) in the x and y directions
respectively. k is called the modulus, and is defined by the ratio
K/K'. This ratio can be expressed in the form
k = 4q 2 H U + q Zn )/(l + q 2 n )} (14)
where
where
2
m = k (18)
and
2 2
sn (w 3 ,k) - sn (w 2 ,k) (20)
c = 2 2
sn (w3,k) - sn (w^,k)
where
v/2 k (21)
w _ 2
3 p
Equation (7) may now be simplified using various identities given,
for example, by Abramowitz & Stegun (1965), so
where the notation sn(w,k) = sn(w) etc. has been used for simplicity.
On any line parallel to the coast greatest drawdowns in the
aquifer will always occur in the x-axis since this is the shortest
distance to the source of recharge at the river. We can therefore
confine our investigation to the real (x) axis, so
Maximum
«_ acceptable
drawdown
0.4 0.5
RIVER X^/V" CBAST
Wellfield position
Fig. 3 Drawdown at river (x = 0) for wellfields pumping a total of 60% of the
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groundwater recharge.
Minimum
«— acceptable
head
Wellfield position
Fig. 4 Groundwater head near the coast (x : 0.41 v) for wellfields pumping a total
of 60% of the groundwater recharge.
Optimization of groundwater extraction from a coastal aquifer 177
ECONOMIC MODEL
The optimum wellfield location is that which provides the cheapest
water subject to the hydrogeological constraints concerning saline
intrusion at the coast and the groundwater drawdown at the river.
These constraints limit the possible locations to a relatively
narrow strip parallel to the coast, as shown in Fig.4.
For economic and engineering reasons it is desirable to have a
uniform rate of abstraction from each production borehole, and the
adoption of a uniform pumping rate is encouraged by experience of
an existing wellfield. Regional variations in borehole construction
costs and running costs are likely to be small in the feasible area
of groundwater development, and have therefore been assumed to be
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Fig. 5 Pipeline strategies: (a) independent pipelines; (b) wellfield output piped to a
single distribution centre; (c) pipelines along existing roads.
Excessive drawdown
at coast
° 40.0
Wellfield position
Fig. 6 Computed cost of pipelines for wellfield pumping a total of 60% of the
groundwater recharge.
oH—1—1—1—1—1 1 1 1 1 1
0 -1 2 3 4 -5 -55 -6 -65 7 74
Abstraction _ , ï
Recharge Maximum safe yield I
2TTT s„ 2TTT S
o m a x = - — — omax (24)
fLQ
nQ 0 iN
The effects of changes in these parameters, either separately or
combined, are really to move the positions of the constraint lines
in Figs 3 and 4 relative to the other graphs.
Although there is considerable uncertainty in the actual values
of T and Q j ^ , the ratio of QJJJ/T is equal to the regional water
level gradient which is known from the measurements made in 30
boreholes in the study area. These observations were made in a
single season, and do not necessarily coincide with the long term
average values. Subsequent well records suggest that the uncert-
ainty in the ratio of Q J N / T is about 10%.
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CONCLUSIONS
An analytical model, based on Jacobian elliptic functions, has been
used to identify feasible wellfield locations and pumping rates for
large-scale groundwater abstraction from an unconfined coastal
aquifer. The requirement to provide water of an acceptable quality
implies a need to limit the extent of saline intrusion at the coast,
and to limit drawdowns in the vicinity of'the river. Permissible
wellfield locations are restricted to bands which run parallel to
the coast.
The close similarity between the optimum solutions obtained from
the simple groundwater model based on Jacobian elliptic functions
182 E.H. Morel & A.B. Birtles
REFERENCES
Abramowitz, M. & Stegun, I.A. (1965) Handbook of Mathematical
Functions with Formulas, Graphs and Mathematical Tables. Dover
Publications.
Bulirsch, R. (1965) Numerical calculation of elliptic integrals
and elliptic functions. Numerische Math.ema.tik 7, 75-90.
Copson, E.T. (1935) An Introduction to the.Theory of Functions
of a Complex Variable, 381-419. Clarendon Press.
Dantzig, G.B. (1963) Linear Programming and Extensions. Princeton
University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
Larson, S.P., Maddock, T. & Papadopulos, S.S. (1977) Optimisation
techniques applied to groundwater development. Mémoires IAH
Birmingham Congress, UK, XIII, Part 1 Papers, E57-66.
Maddock, T. III. (1972) Algebraic technological function from a
simulation model. Water Resour. Res. 8, 129-134.
Smith, P.J. & Piper, B.S. (1978) A non-linear optimisation method
for the estimation of aquifer parameters. J. Hydrol. 39, 255-271.
Todd, D.K. (1959) Ground Water Hydrology, p.281. John Wiley, New
York.