An extended corner point method for the synthesis of flexible water network

Abstract

This paper presents an extended methodology for the design of flexible water network (FWN). In many water network systems, parameters of the water-using processes (e.g. flow rate, concentration, etc.) vary due to operational changes. Hence, it is important to synthesize a FWN that can absorb these changes, so to ensure business sustainability. In this paper, the recently established corner point method for FWN synthesis is extended to cater the discrete way of process parameters change. The newly proposed methodology ensures the synthesized FWN to achieve the intended objective, i.e. minimum fresh water intake and minimum total pipeline length, while satisfying the various process constraints (e.g. flow rate, concentration, etc.). To address the multiple-objective problem, a three-step optimization method has been developed. The corner point method is also extended to synthesize a FWN that achieves the minimum total annualized costs (TAC). A literature case study was used to show the usefulness of the proposed method.