The disinfection characteristics of an open channel ultra-violet (UV) wastewater disinfection reactor are investigated using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. The model is based on the volume of fluid method to capture the water-air interface, the Lagrangian particle tracking method to determine the microbial particle trajectory and the discrete ordinate model to calculate the UV intensity field. The numerical predictions are compared with the available experimental data to validate the CFD model. A parametric study is performed to understand the effects of different parameters on the disinfection performance of the reactor. The hydraulic behaviour and the additive nature of disinfection for an open channel reactor with two lamp banks placed in series using different geometric configurations between the two lamp banks are also investigated. A scaling down methodology for the open channel reactor is developed and implemented in the CFD model to understand its applicability
