Sunday, February 20, 2011

Improving urban wastewater management through an auction-based management of discharges

Improving urban wastewater management through an auction-based management of discharges: "

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2011.01.005

Abstract: This article proposes the use of an auction process in which the capacity of a WasteWater Treatment Plant (WWTP) is sold to coordinate different industrial discharges within the Urban Wastewater System (UWS). The main goal of coordination is to manage the wastewater inflow rate and pollutants to improve the WWTP operation. The system is modeled as a multi-agent system where each industry is represented by an agent, another agent represents the influent coming from the domestic use and one agent represents the WWTP. When the maximum level of the flow or the maximum concentrations of some components exceed the plant’s capacity, an auction starts. In the auction, the WWTP agent is the auctioneer that sells its resources and the industry agents are the bidders that want to buy the resources. The winners of the auction will discharge to the sewage system and the losers will have to wait for the next opportunity. The resulting wastewater discharge schedules of the industries have been analyzed using the IWA/COST simulation benchmark as a case study. The results obtained through this simulation protocol show that the auction-based coordination mechanism using both pollution and hydraulic capacity constraints accomplishes the goal of improving the effluent quality, achieving a reduction in the impact of industrial discharges up to 20.99%.



by Javier Murillo 1, Dídac Busquets 1, Jordi Dalmau 2, Beatriz López 1, Víctor Muñoz 1 and Ignasi Rodríguez-Roda 2 and 3

1. Institut d’Informàtica i Aplicacions, Universitat de Girona, Campus Montilivi, 17071 Girona, Spain

2. Laboratory of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Universitat de Girona, Campus Montilivi, 17071 Girona, Spain

3. Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Edifici H2O, Parc Científic i Tecnològic de la Universitat de Girona, Emili Grahit 101, 17003 Girona, Spain

Environmental Modelling & Software via Elsevier Science Direct www.ScienceDirect.com

Article in Press, Corrected Proof; Available Onlin February 9, 2011"

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