Process selection for municipal wastewater treatment plants in Iran

Proper process selection has a very important role in optimal design and operation of municipal wastewater treatment plants specially at executing time (construction and maintenance). Many of Iranian wastewater treatment plants are designed without considering important issues such as: option of Satellite or Centralized plant, option of sludge and effluent reuse, energy consumption efficiency, national technology level, equipment availability and minimal operational and maintenance complexity. The aim of this work is to provide an integrated and comprehensive procedure for the conceptual design and optimal process selection of municipal wastewater treatment plants in Iran which has a great potential for developing new wastewater treatment plants for many towns. For this reason this work has been defined to establish a unique multi-criteria optimization for process selection, aiming to help the decision makers and design engineers to find optimal process design with economical consideration. The main parameters included in this study are existing water and wastewater system in the studytown, level of public health and cleansing, people tradition and culture, local situation and condition, land availability and price and wastewater quality and quantity. Critical consideration of the above mentioned parameters leads to two major decisions: Separate versus Combined sewer collection systems and Central versus Satellite systems. Having done this step, and taking into account the result of necessary evaluations such as environmental impact, technical feasibility, economical feasibility and legislation and legal issues, a few design alternative options will appear.

کلیدواژه ها:

municipal wastewater treatment ، process selection ، multi-criteria optimization ، wastewater reuse ، optimal operation