Abstract
ABSTRACT Determination of sewage treatment plants pollutant removal efficiencies, considering the protection of water resources, is very difficult because it involves complex analysis that must take into account multiple discharges into watercourses presenting different self depuration capacities. The research aimed to evaluate different optimization models for determination of minimum sewage treatment efficiencies for plants located in a watershed. The analyzed optimization models involves minimization of the sum of treatment efficiencies and minimization of inequity between sewage treatment efforts. Water quality mathematical model and Genetic Algorithm were combined in a MatLab software computing environment. The Pardo river watershed is the study area. Pardo river is a tributary of the Itapemirim river, important watercourse located in the southern part of Espirito Santo State, in Brazil. The results indicate that the optimization models that incorporate measurement of equity as a problem restriction did not generate consistent answers, probably because of the wide range of sewage loads values considered in the Pardo river watershed. The models that incorporate equity measures in the objective function showed satisfactory performance and resulted in very close values for minimum sewage treatment efficiencies.
Highlights
Some activities that make part of water resources planning and management processes are intended to adjust water bodies availability and quality to demand patterns established by different possible uses.As support tools for decision-making processes related to planning and management of water resources, water quality models are widely used to evaluate a) the spatial and temporal evolution of water bodies quality and b) the effects of final disposal of raw or treated domestic or industrial effluents
The combined use of water quality models and optimization techniques have received attention from various authors such as Cho et al (2004), Aras, Togan and Berkun (2007), Saadatpour and Afshar (2007) and Carvalho and Kaviski (2009), that deal with the definition of treatment efficiencies for sewage plants located in different watersheds
Pardo river DBO profile presents concentration peaks when receiving effluents generated by Ibatiba and Iúna municipalities
Summary
Some activities that make part of water resources planning and management processes are intended to adjust water bodies availability and quality to demand patterns established by different possible uses.As support tools for decision-making processes related to planning and management of water resources, water quality models are widely used to evaluate a) the spatial and temporal evolution of water bodies quality and b) the effects of final disposal of raw or treated domestic or industrial effluents. Some activities that make part of water resources planning and management processes are intended to adjust water bodies availability and quality to demand patterns established by different possible uses. The selection process of sewage treatment plants becomes more complex when viewed from the standpoint of a watershed that presents multiple releases of different loads in water bodies presenting different self depuration capacities (REIS; VALORY; MENDONÇA, 2015). In this context water quality models, even indispensable, may have use limitations due to the diversity of alternatives that require evaluation. The combined use of water quality models and optimization techniques have received attention from various authors such as Cho et al (2004), Aras, Togan and Berkun (2007), Saadatpour and Afshar (2007) and Carvalho and Kaviski (2009), that deal with the definition of treatment efficiencies for sewage plants located in different watersheds
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