Modelo vazão-velocidade para avaliação de potencial hidrocinético

Abstract

The Brazilian hydrological information network provides daily flow data; however, daily velocity information is not available in historical series. The inventory of river velocities is important for many applications, and one of them is the study of hydrokinetic potential, including downstream of hydroelectric plants. Therefore, the work proposes a model called Flow-Velocity that determines the average daily velocity, the geometric form and the distribution of the logarithmic velocity profile of the cross section of rivers from daily flow data. The model was initially applied in a small river basin with flow data and the validation was performed using the mean square error (RMSE), the relative mean square error (RRMSE), the standard deviation of observation (RSR) and the percentage of bias PBIAS. Subsequently, the model was applied to the river basins of the Amazonas, São Francisco and Paraná rivers (Brazil's largest basins), using the highest and lowest flows in the historical series. The highest and lowest average speed found in the Amazon River was 2.27 ms-1 and 0.735 ms-1 in the Óbidos cross-section for a flow of 266 897 m³s-1 and 72 480 m³-1, respectively. The main contributors to the Amazon River, with the exception of the Trombetas, Madeira and Xingu rivers, present average daily speeds below 2 ms-1 for the flood period, but in the dry season the average daily speeds of all are below 0.5 ms-1. The São Francisco river, in the transversal sections studied along its length, presents velocities between 3.09 ms-1 to 1.68 ms-1 for the period of flood and in the period of drought the speeds are between 0,44 ms-1 to 0,12 ms-1. In the Paraná River, velocities are between 2.17 ms-1 to 1.50 ms-1 and 0,59 ms-1 to 0,12 ms-1 for the greater and smaller flow, in due order. It was verified that the Amazon river has hydrokinetic potential that can be explored all year round. In the São Francisco basin, it is only in the period of higher flows that there is potential for the installation of hydrokinetic turbines, similar to the Paraná river basin. Of course, at points in rivers where there are hydroelectric plants, this assessment should change due to the dispatch of power plants.