A systematic method to minimize freshwater utilization by multiple contaminants network

Abstract

A systematic procedure is developed to design and evaluate water by using networks with multiple contaminants. The proposed algorithm contain two sequential steps, in the first step the total, the total possibilities of matching source flows to demand flows were evaluated and a heuristic design technique is proposed based on the results. In the second step, three strategies are suggested to reach high level of operability, two source shift, path relaxation and loop breakage are applied in order to improve the network and minimize interconnections. The proposed approach was evaluated and assessed through a case study. The results are in match with the available data in the literature. In the meantime the computational time to reach confluence was significantly reduced.