Leakage Control in Water Distribution Networks by Using Optimal Pressure Management: A Case Study

Abstract

More than thirty percent of drinking water loss through water distribution systems (WDS) in Iran has made a major concern for Iranian water utilities, which has been located in a semi-arid area. In many cases, invisible leakage in the pipelines of WDS, particularly old WDSs, causes a high proportion of total annual losses. Pressure management is a well known and useful tool for reducing invisible leakage since leak is a pressure dependent function. This paper presents an optimization model for pressure management by optimizing pressure reducing valves (PRV) locations and settings. The PRVs location and setting is formulated here as an optimization problem with: (1) the objective function of maximizing the coverage of end-node users’ pressures in an appropriate range; (2) the objective function of minimizing total leakage in the network. Genetic algorithm is used here as the optimization model, in which EPANET toolkit is used as the simulation engine. The model is applied to a case study in Iran known as Mahalat WDS which has assigned a high value of water loss in the networks. The results show that the system is able to considerably moderate the high pressure values and total value of drinking water which is annually lost.