Modeling of thermal pollution in coastal area and its economical and environmental assessment

The Persian Gulf is one of the aquatic ecosystems which has recently faced with different pollutions. Cooling water discharges due to various industries such as power plants can cause important disorders on present ecosystem balance because of its high temperature. Obviously, due to thermal pollution, a great number of aquatic creatures face with a new situation that they can not tolerate. Thermal pollution leads to their migration, creates a potential for new coming species which in turn can thoroughly change the marine ecosystem feature. The other impacts of this phenomenon are: disorders in reproduction, nourishment and other biological habits. In this research, thermal pollution due to Bandar Abbas Thermal Power Plant (BATP) development plan was modeled using MIKE21 software. In order to avoid a decrease on the power plant efficiency in development plan, the distance between inlet and outlet was determined by comparing the results of different scenarios and economical aspects. After determining the distance between inlet and outlet, the water temperature in the coastal area was compared with standards of Iranian Department of the Environment (DOE). The model results represent that the water temperature, in Bandar Abbas coastal area, exceeds than the permissible limit (3 °C) in a distance equal to 200 m. far from the discharging location, and in order to reduce its harmful impacts, some suggestions are made to reduce the associated thermal pollution.