OPTIMAL-DESIGN OF DISTRIBUTED WASTE-WATER TREATMENT NETWORKS

This paper deals with the optimum design of a distributed wastewater n etwork where multicomponent streams are considered that are to be proc essed by units for reducing the concentration of several contaminants. The proposed model gives rise to a nonconvex nonlinear problem which often exhibits local minima and causes convergence difficulties. A sea rch procedure is proposed in this paper that is based on the successiv e solution of a relaxed linear model and the original nonconvex nonlin ear problem. Several examples are presented to illustrate that the pro posed method often yields global or near global optimum solutions. The model is also extended for selecting different treatment technologies and for handling membrane separation modules.