Conceptual design of wastewater treatment plants using a design support system

Abstract

A case study showed the advantages of using a design support system during the design and retro®t of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). The Manresa WWTP was chosen to demonstrate these advantages. While the records of the decision-making process used during the Manresa WWTP design were not available to the authors, its original design objectives and the resulting structure and values for its more important variables were. A simpli®ed but plausible design history focusing on the design decisions and not on the detailed modelling of the WWTP was generated with this information. Using such a design history it is possible (1) to evaluate automatically the compliance of alternative design proposals with respect to the design objectives; (2) to study the in¯uence of the weight of the arguments in the selection of the most adequate proposal; (3) to document the decision-making process; and (4) to assist the designer in the search of speci®c items within the historical records during the review of the current design or during the retro®t of the plant.

Evaluation of the operation performance of a municipal activated sludge unit

“…By a suitable combination of these unit processes it is possible to produce a specifi ed fi nal effl uent quality from virtually any type of infl uent wastewater. The amount of treatment required depends largely on the water quality objectives of the receiving water and also the dilution capacity available [1,2].…”

Site-Scale Integrated Decision Support Tool (i-DSTss) for Stormwater Management

“…A user interface should facilitate easy quantitative data input and allow user intervention to change alternatives [61]. Usually, little attention is given to the user interface when a decision support tool is intended as a conceptual demonstration or evaluation of approaches [62], or when it is intended for a highly specific use, or for expert users who are more concerned with the theory behind the decision process [63,64]. This i-DSTss tool is intended to be used by a wide range of utilities, and/or by users who may not be modelers, and therefore employs a user interface that allows easy interaction.…”

Process development of treatment plants for dyeing wastewater

“…Rodriguez‐Roda et al1 and Vidal et al2 proposed a conceptual design method with which the process units in a wastewater treatment plant were selected based on a hierarchical decision process, design history and process simulation. The hierarchical decision process was implemented with a decision support tool which decomposes complex decisions into a number of simpler sub‐decisions.…”