Visualisation of clogging in green infrastructure growing media

ABSTRACT

Growing media in green infrastructure (GI) designed for stormwater management plays a critical role in providing hydrological benefits. However, sediment deposition by urban stormwater can cause clogging and reduce the infiltration capacity. This study introduces a new approach to characterise the impact of clogging of GI that uses fluorescent tracer particles. Results are compared for two contrasting growing media: Grey to Green Substrate (G2G) and Marie Curie Substrate (MCS). Results showed that most sediment particles were retained on the surface of both growing media, and surface clogging in G2G caused a decrease in infiltration capacity. Sediment vertical movement was observed in both growing media, but particles travelled deeper in MCS. Vertical sediment movement is influenced by the growing media’s pore size distribution, and a high clogging risk is expected in growing media with a pore size distribution that is close to the particle size distribution of the incoming sediment particles.

KEYWORDS:

• Clogging
• green infrastructure
• growing media
• fluorescent tracer particles
• visualisation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Joesph Milner, Martin Taylor and Paul Osborne for their technical support in setting up the experiment. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available via The University of Sheffield’s Online Research Data (ORDA) service, DOI: 10.15131/shef.data.20059580.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2023.2180394

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the United Kingdom’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant numbers EP/S005536/1 and EP/S005862/1.