Keywords
discharge coordination, integrated management, water quality, auction mechanisms, benchmark, bsm
Start Date
1-7-2008 12:00 AM
Abstract
This paper proposes the use of an auction process in which the capacity of aWaste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) is sold to coordinate the industrial discharges. Themain goal of coordination is to manage the wastewater inflow rate and pollutants to improvethe WWTP operation. The system is modeled as a multi-agent system where each industryis represented by an agent, another agent represents the influent coming from the domesticuse and one more agent represents the WWTP. When the maximum level of the flow or themaximum concentrations of some components exceed the plant's capacity, an auction starts.In the auction, the WWTP agent is the auctioneer that sells its capacity (resources) and theindustry agents are the bidders that want to buy the resources. In the auction process thebidders send their bids to the auctioneer and the auctioneer decides which are the winners.The winners will discharge to the sewage system and the losers will have to wait for the nextopportunity. After the coordination process, the resulting wastewater discharge schedules ofthe industries have been analyzed using the IWA/COST simulation benchmark as a casestudy. The results obtained through this simulation protocol show that the auction-basedcoordination mechanism using both pollution and hydraulic capacity constraintsaccomplishes the goal of improving the effluent quality, achieving a reduction in the impactof industrial discharges up to 20,99%.
Improving waste water treatment quality through an auction-based management of discharges
This paper proposes the use of an auction process in which the capacity of aWaste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) is sold to coordinate the industrial discharges. Themain goal of coordination is to manage the wastewater inflow rate and pollutants to improvethe WWTP operation. The system is modeled as a multi-agent system where each industryis represented by an agent, another agent represents the influent coming from the domesticuse and one more agent represents the WWTP. When the maximum level of the flow or themaximum concentrations of some components exceed the plant's capacity, an auction starts.In the auction, the WWTP agent is the auctioneer that sells its capacity (resources) and theindustry agents are the bidders that want to buy the resources. In the auction process thebidders send their bids to the auctioneer and the auctioneer decides which are the winners.The winners will discharge to the sewage system and the losers will have to wait for the nextopportunity. After the coordination process, the resulting wastewater discharge schedules ofthe industries have been analyzed using the IWA/COST simulation benchmark as a casestudy. The results obtained through this simulation protocol show that the auction-basedcoordination mechanism using both pollution and hydraulic capacity constraintsaccomplishes the goal of improving the effluent quality, achieving a reduction in the impactof industrial discharges up to 20,99%.
