Laboratory investigation on the performances of baffles for the capture of sewer floatables

The use of baffles in sewer systems enables the capture of floatables, which could be responsible for both malfunctioning of water treatment plants and aesthetic pollution of receiving bodies when discharges through combined sewer overflow devices occur. An experimental contribution to the understanding of capturing processes of floatable elements by means of baffle devices is presented in this paper. Experiments were carried out using different baffle configurations. The limit equilibrium conditions of various types of floatables, i.e the condition beyond which upstream intercepted floatables start to escape the baffle, were investigated. The dimensional analysis was used in order to generalize the results of the experiments and to compare the capturing performances of analysed baffle configurations.