The Optimization-based synthesis and design of water/wastewater network for water management in petroleum refinery effluent treatment plant

Abstract

The advent of complicated industrial water/wastewater management problems contributes to a determination of effective systematic design for sustainable solution of water balance among conservation, allocation and regeneration. The objective of this work was to extend the research in the area of systematic design of water/wastewater management by developing and modifying a generic model-based synthesis and design of optimized water/wastewater network applying the framework of Quaglia et al. (2013). A petroleum refinery effluent treatment plant was implemented in order to formulate different design schemes with two criteria involving with the structure of the treatment system and the requirement of water effluent alternatives that required a sequential solution procedure for different optimization model formulations in two stages. The solution obtained in the case study demonstrated the network design with an improvement in the reduction of a total annualized cost (TAC) and wastewater discharge rate (WWDR) because of a water recycling option. As a consequence, the main key features of developing this approach was to screen and obtain potential optimal networks from a large dimension of problem in an effective time manner, and to provide design flexibility to different scenarios using abovementioned strategic formulations. This developed approach is suitable for all design phases including a new process system, existing process or a retrofit design and is also portable to adapt to be beneficial as preliminary designed pattern for an application in process simulation of further detailed treatment process modelling and design.