Abstract
A modified method is presented for the design of distributed wastewater treatment systems, in which each process can remove multiple contaminants, based on our previous work. In the design procedure, the value of Total Mixing Influence Potential (TMIP), which can be obtained based on the pinch principle, reflects the influence of performing a process on the total treatment flowrate of the system. The process with the smallest TMIP value will be performed first, when designing of the treatment system. However, when a process can remove multiple contaminants, it is difficult to obtain the values of the TMIP. This paper improves the calculation of TMIP values for the processes, which can remove multiple contaminants, by combining pinch principle with a linear programming approach. The investigation of a literature example shows that the result obtained with the method proposed is comparable to the optimal solution obtained in the literature. In addition, the method proposed is low computational complexity and of clear engineering insight.
