Development of a contaminant distribution model for water supply systems

Abstract

Water contamination can result in serious health complications and gross socioeconomic implications. Therefore, identifying the source of contamination is of great concern to researchers and water operators, particularly, to avert the unfavorable consequences that can ensue from consuming contaminated water. As part of the effort to address this challenge, this present study proposes a novel contaminant distribution model for water supply systems. The concept of superimposing the contaminant over the hydraulic analysis was used to develop the proposed model. Four water sample networks were used to test the performance of the proposed model. The results obtained displayed the contaminant distributions across the water network at a limited computational time. Apart from being the first in this domain, the significant reduction of computational time achieved by the proposed model is a major contribution to the field.