Chlorine-age based booster chlorination optimization in water distribution network considering the uncertainty of residuals

Abstract

Booster chlorination has been applied by many utilities for better chlorine-residual maintenance. In this paper, a new water-age based method for optimal location and dosage of booster disinfection has been proposed, as well as an uncertainty analysis of chlorine residuals. Chlorine-age, a novel indicator of water quality, is firstly introduced based on water age. By minimizing the total chlorine-age of nodes in a water distribution network (WDN), a new model for optimal booster location is proposed. The chlorine-age based model is independent of chlorine-decay simulation, and therefore avoids the complexity of obtaining kinetic parameters and prevents misleading results caused by inaccurate simulation of chlorine residuals. The uncertainties of chlorine residuals increase along with the distance and time consumption for delivering water. In this study, chlorine-age is employed to measure the uncertainties of nodal residuals, and optimal chlorine dosage is calculated considering the uncertainties. The proposed method has been tested on an example network and a real-life network to illustrate its validity and applicability. The results have shown that the method is feasible and reliable in practical application.

Managing Water Quality in Intermittent Supply Systems: The Case of Mukono Town, Uganda

“…As such, the approach can be applied in other similar systems using intermittent water supply to improve the water quality while the system transitions to continuous supply over many years. In future, inline disinfectant addition locations could also be optimised for a more uniform chlorine distribution [44,45].…”