A Proposed Framework for a Water-Energy Nexus in Water Treatment Plants

Energy and water are interlinking each other, especially in the water treatment systems. Energy is mainly used to operate the water treatment plant and to improve the water quality, including water transferring, water pumping, chemical feeding, clarifying, and filtering. The significant challenges of the waterworks authorities are how to produce efficiently and economically water supply and how to manage the limited resources like water and energy resources. The Water-Energy Nexus (WEN) is an integrated concept that considers both energy and water resources in a holistic perspective, so that it can manage the challenges in the optimal way. However, there are some research gaps in the literature. The existing body of knowledge cannot apply to study and analyze the WEN in a water treatment plant. This study aims to study and propose the WEN framework that can improve the performance of the water treatment system. The conceptual model of WEN in water treatment system can be evaluated in terms of the energy and economic performances. The developed WEN framework in this paper will be applied to a case study in Bangkok, Thailand for performance evaluation under different scenarios.