Design support tool for flexible drinking water treatment plants

“Drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) play a crucial role in ensuring the supply of safe, high-quality drinking water by treating raw water from various sources, such as surface water and groundwater. The design of a DWTP is a complex process that requires careful selection of treatment technologies to meet regulatory standards for drinking water quality. Additionally, water utilities must consider various factors, including construction and operational costs, land availability, environmental impact, and system complexity. All the above considerations highlight the importance of adapting a more structured and efficient approach on the DWTP design process – one that is also adaptable to the growing need for decentralized solutions, a defining trend in the future of DWTP.

This paper presents a design support tool (DST) for the preliminary design of a small and flexible DWTP. The aim of this work is to provide a supporting tool for process technologists and decision-makers at water utilities, that will simplify the preliminary design of the DWTP. The DST will present the end-user with a proposal of treatment trains that meet the water quality standards, including preliminary costs calculations, energy consumption, CO2 emissions and required spatial footprint. In addition, key uncertainties, e.g. changes in future water demand, are considered and calculated. Finally, the user has the option to view and assess treatment technologies of each treatment train, including the required spatial footprint, chemicals, costs and energy consumption.

To this aim, the DST follows an automated procedure for the selection of the different treatment steps (e.g. for organic micropollutants (OMPs) removal) and most effective treatment technologies (e.g. ozonation, activated carbon filtration, membrane filtration) based on the water source, water demand and quality of the raw water as specified by the user. The tool then calculates the treatment capacity, of the DWTP based on the population it is designed to serve, the spatial footprint and the energy consumption. Key characteristics of state-of-the-art treatment technologies are sourced from the literature and regulators specifications [1],[2],[3] and stored in a database. The option of multi-objective optimisation between cost and footprint minimisation is also provided to the user.

The current version of the tool is developed in Python with an example of the DST output shown in Figure 1. The final version of the DST will be deployed as a Django web application, featuring a graphical user interface (GUI) to enhance “user-friendliness”. Future work also includes an automated Pareto optimization as mentioned above. The optimization then entails the minimization of operational costs and CO2 emissions while ensuring high water quality standards.”

(Citation: Kyritsakas, G., Vries, D., Rietveld, L., et.al. – Design support tool for flexible drinking water treatment plants – CCWI 2025 – 21st Computing & Control for the Water Industry Conference, Sheffield, UK, 1-3 September – https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.29921087)