Minimizing the environmental impact of wastewater discharges with SOS

• Author: Aurea Martinez, Universidad de Vigo.


• Names of other authors: Lino J. Alvarez-Vazquez Nestor Garcia-Chan Miguel E. Vazquez-Mendez.


• Oral or poster: poster.


• Downloadable abstract: click here.


• Abstract:
  Elimination of waste is one of the most important environmental problems. For the particular case of wastewater in any urban area, sewage domestic and trade waste are collected from the different districts and transported to purifying plants via pipes and pumping stations. These plants treat sewage by different methods and finally, treated effluents are discharged through a submarine outfall into an aquatic media (a lake, a river, an estuary...). Sewage treatment is not only a necessary task but also a very expensive one, and determining the intensity of the treatment becomes a very difficult problem involving environmental and economical aspects. The problem can be even more complicated if there are several plants discharging wastewater in the same area. In this case, different (cooperative and non-cooperative) multi-objective problems can be formulated.
  
  In this work we use numerical simulation, and combine optimal control theory of partial differential equations with multi-objective optimization techniques to formulate and solve this type of problems. Specifically, the main objective of this paper is to detail the mathematical models and numerical techniques that we have used, and which is the kernel of the free software SOS recently developed by the authors to assess in decision making related to the sewage treatment intensities in each one of the purifying plants.
  
  (More detail in adjoint extended abstract).